founding father

noun

Definition of founding father

1 : an originator of an institution or movement : founder

2 often capitalized both Fs : a leading figure in the founding of the U.S. specifically : a member of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787

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Examples of founding father in a Sentence

a tribute to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the other Founding Fathers Theodor Herzl is often credited as the founding father of modern Zionism.

Recent Examples on the Web Monnet was a founding father of the European Union. — Samuel Petrequin, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Jan. 2022 Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay was practically the company’s founding father. — WSJ, 16 Nov. 2021 Born Derrick Jones, D-Nice was one of the revolutionaries of quarantine and the founding father of what the digital media-verse knows as Club Quarantine. — D'shonda Brown, Forbes, 24 June 2021 Bannon, a sixty-seven-year-old former investment banker and movie producer, is a founding father of Trumpism. — David Rohde, The New Yorker, 27 Oct. 2021 Bob Dake was the founding father of Lansing wrestling. — Cody Goodwin, USA TODAY, 30 July 2021 Haitian media reported Sunday that armed gangs prevented Prime Minister Ariel Henry from laying a floral wreath at a monument to Haiti’s founding father Jean-Jacques Dessalines. — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Oct. 2021 Hamilton, the wildly successful bio-musical of founding father Alexander Hamilton, has been hailed in part for its racial diversity, as the hip hop musical features casts that are predominantly made up of performers of color. — Alison Durkee, Forbes, 13 Oct. 2021 On Sunday, the day after the missionaries were kidnapped, the Haitian government’s cavalcade came under gunfire and sped off before the prime minister could attend the ceremony honoring the nation’s founding father. — New York Times, 21 Oct. 2021

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'founding father.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Last Updated

20 Jan 2022

Cite this Entry

“Founding father.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/founding%20father. Accessed 21 Jan. 2022.

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