grandfather

Pluralgrandfathers

Formsgrandfathers, grandfathering, grandfathered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The father of one's mother or father.

   Her grandfather emigrated from Italy in the 1920s.

   He inherited the old farmhouse from his grandfather.

   Oppositegrandmother

   Note

   The grand here once meant "great". Middle English grandfadre joined graunt ("big, large; great, important") to fader, probably on the model of Middle French grandpere. The word has long belonged to the law as well as the hearth: Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766) places the grandfather in lineal consanguinity, one step further up a direct line of descent than the father.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A male ancestor in a line of descent; a forefather.

   The tribe told stories of the grandfathers who first crossed the mountains.

   She felt connected to the grandfather whose name she still carried generations later.

   Similarforefather, ancestor, forebear

   Oppositedescendant

   Note

   In the plural it can speak for a whole people's past. A council speech recorded in Post's Second Journal of 1758 offers "the pipe which your grandfathers used to smoke with", reaching back far beyond two generations. Grandsire is the older-sounding equivalent, and highfather survives only as a rarity.

3. 3
   verbUStransitive

   To keep an old rule in force for a person, organization, or thing that was already subject to it, even after the rule itself has been discontinued.

   The new policy grandfathers existing members at their current dues.

   Lawmakers agreed to grandfather the factories built before 1990.

   Similarexempt

   Note

   A verb made from the grandfather clause, the provision that lets an existing arrangement stand when new rules arrive. In Guinn v. United States (1915) the Supreme Court ruled such clauses unconstitutional, as NPR's Alan Greenblatt recounts. The verb is chiefly American and most at home in the passive: old power plants are grandfathered from new clean-air requirements, a house is grandfathered into code changes, and the phrasal grandfather in does the same work.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To be a grandfather to someone, or to take on a grandfather's role toward them.

   After the boy's grandparents died, the old man grandfathered him for years.

   He chose to grandfather the orphaned children of his late friend.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The archived older version of a file, the copy that immediately precedes the more recent 'father' file in a backup sequence.

   In the backup rotation, the grandfather sits two generations behind the current working file.

   Administrators stored the grandfather offsite in case both newer copies failed.

   Note

   Backup practice borrows the family tree: three generations of a file are kept, called grandfather, father and son. Each one is the file the next was built from, together with that day's transaction files. The scheme reaches beyond computing manuals into auditing, and the Wiley CPA Exam Review 2008 explains the grandfather in exactly these terms.

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