grandfathered
- 1Permitted to keep operating under older rules, or exempted from a new regulation, because of having been established beforehand.
Like a tenant whose rent stays frozen at the old rate while every new lease in the building costs more.
Because the factory predated the zoning law, its smokestack was grandfathered and allowed to remain.
Long-time members enjoy grandfathered dues that the club cannot raise.
Similarexempt
- 2Simple past and past participle of grandfather.
Regulators grandfathered the existing plants when the emissions standards took effect.
Because the building was grandfathered, it kept its original wiring legally.
Note
One spelling does both jobs: regulators grandfathered the plants (past tense), and the plants were grandfathered (participle, often passive). The verb behind it has two lives. One is acting as a grandfather to someone. The other is the US regulatory use, letting older cases keep the rules they began under, and that is the one in play for buildings and plants. Placed before a noun, as in grandfathered dues, it becomes the exemption adjective.
Showing meanings only.
grandfathered is a form of grandfather
grandfather, verb: 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. Full entry
- Forms
- grandfathergrandfathers he/she/itgrandfathering -ing formgrandfathered past tense, past participle
- Spelling
- grandfather → grandfathered: add -ed
Use it in a sentence
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