[f. FATHER sb. + -SHIP.] The position, state or relation of a father; paternity, fatherhood. † Also in His Fathership: the personality of an ecclesiastical father.
1583. Golding, Calvin on Deut. lxxx. 489. Let vs beware of such maner of fathership.
1670. G. H., Hist. Cardinals, I. II. 60. He told him that he had lay’n a whole night with his Fatherships Neice, and began to faint almost under the shame and apprehension of his Sin.
1755. Johnson, Paternity, fathership; the relation of a father.
1809. Southey, Lett. (1856), II. 168. After the fathership, and sonship, and all the other ships have been exhausted, there now comes a kiss for that good ship the Dreadnought, where Uncle Tom lives!
1871. The Saturday Review, XXXI. 15 April, 457/2. There was not a throne which did not acknowledge in his [the Pope’s] fathership the palladium of its liberty and strength.
1875. M. Collins, Blacksmith & Scholar, etc. (1876), III. 107. The man whose fathership she disowned.
1890. T. W. Allies, Peter’s Rock, 468. The civil bond sprung from a spiritual fathership.
