How would you define "father"?

You would think it's the easiest thing in the world, but apparently it's not. In one of the Lexicom sessions we were talking about the best way to write a dictionary entry, and now I realise it's not an easy task. So, how would you define "father"? Compare these definitions:

• One by whom a child is or has been begotten, a male parent, the nearest male ancestor. (OED)
• A man who has begotten a child. (Merriam Webster)
• Male parent: a male parent of a human being or animal. (Encarta)
• Your male parent. (Macmillan)

But, here is the prototype of the 'wrong' way to define a word (I advise you not to think about it too much):

• Your father is the man who made your mother pregnant with you (COBUILD2)

Told you.. :)


Oh, and when we were talking about corpus-based dictionaries and choosing corpus examples to include in entries, this was mentioned as a 'bad' example for the headword suck:

• McDonald's sucks, let's go to Burger King.

I would actually put it as 'both McDonald's and Burger King suck' :)

Ok, I'll go now and try to define "it": a two-letter word that can mean anything or nothing. How about that for a start? :)

Mai