parent

noun

1. (in-plural, often)A person who raises a child (which they have made, adopted, fostered, taken as their own, etc.).

   “After both her parents were killed in a forest fire, Sonia was adopted by her aunt and uncle.”

   “my trust / Like a good parent, did beget of him / A falsehood in it's contrarie, as great / As my trust was, which had indeede no limit, / A confidence sans bound.”

   “And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind […]”

   “The NHS is naturally pro-immunisation, reassuring parents that their babies can easily cope with these jabs.”

   “It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.”

2. (in-plural, often)A person who has had a baby; this person in relation to their child or children.
3. A surrogate parent.
4. A third person who has provided DNA samples in an IVF procedure in order to alter faulty genetic material.
5. (obsolete)A relative.
6. The source or origin of something.

   “Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry.”

   “Indolence and unalimentary food are the parents of this disease; but to neither are Indians accustomed.”

7. An organism from which a plant or animal is immediately biologically descended.
8. (attributive)Sponsor, supporter, owner, protector.

   “The dinghy was trailing astern at the end of its painter, and Merrion looked at it as he passed. He saw that it was a battered-looking affair of the prahm type, with a blunt snout, and like the parent ship, had recently been painted a vivid green.”

9. (attributive)Sponsor, supporter, owner, protector.

   “The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them[…]is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies.[…]current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate[…]“stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.”

10. The object from which a child or derived object is descended; a node superior to another node.
11. The nuclide that decays into a daughter nuclide.

verb

1. To act as parent, to raise or rear.

   “However, even with money and caregivers, the child is left without a parent and most likely without a plan for their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. A time will come when you will no longer be able to parent your child, period.”

2. To provide a parent object for one or more other objects, which become the children.

name

1. A surname.