Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having no living father.
  • adjective Having no known father.
  • adjective Being or having been deprived of paternal care.
  • adjective Of uncertain origin or authenticity.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having no father; fatherless; hence, produced contrary to the course of nature. Not acknowledged by its father; having no acknowledged father, as an illegitimate child: used figuratively; as, an unfathered proposition.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having no father; fatherless; hence, born contrary to nature.
  • adjective Having no acknowledged father; hence, illegitimate; spurious; bastard.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not raised by a father.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ fathered

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Examples

  • It usually eliminates a lot of disease risk, too early pregnancies and unfathered children.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Sex Education, Dirty Words, and the Due Process Clause 2010

  • Still more remarkable is the historically unfathered impulse of the Jewish nation to set about eliminating participation by quite other methods than those of alpha-thinking [that is, of thinking about things].

    Sources of Theology in Job « Unknowing 2010

  • One or two of the ambitious young partisans of the empress might be left languishing unfathered and without patron in obscure dungeons, unless this projected conference at Coventry produced some sensible agreement that must, among its details, spare a thought to insist on their liberation.

    A River So Long 2010

  • It usually eliminates a lot of disease risk, too early pregnancies and unfathered children.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Sex Education, Dirty Words, and the Due Process Clause 2010

  • Our goal is to make fathering a personal and national priority with the vision that no child would go unfathered.

    They Call Me Dad Ken Canfield 2005

  • Our goal is to make fathering a personal and national priority with the vision that no child would go unfathered.

    They Call Me Dad Ken Canfield 2005

  • Our goal is to make fathering a personal and national priority with the vision that no child would go unfathered.

    They Call Me Dad Ken Canfield 2005

  • Should she succeed, she would be a penniless unmarried female with a daughter, her child would be unfathered and base, and he — as far as she could see — would be beyond the reach of punishment.

    Lady Anna 2004

  • Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

  • One or two of the ambitious young partisans of the empress might be left languishing unfathered and without patron in obscure dungeons, unless this projected conference at Coventry produced some sensible agreement that must, among its details, spare a thought to insist on their liberation.

    Brother Cadfael's Penance Peters, Ellis, 1913- 1994

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