Category:Patriarchal

Pa`tri*ar"chal, a. Etym: [cf. F. patriarcal.]

1. Of or pertaining to a patriarch or to patriarchs; possessed by, or Subject to, patriarchs; as, patriarchal authority or jurisdiction; a Patriarchal see; a patriarchal church.

2. Characteristic of a patriarch; venerable. About whose patriarchal knee late the little children clung. Tennyson.

3. (ethnol.)

Defn: having an organization of society and government in which the Head of the family exercises authority over all its generations. Patriarchal cross (her.), a cross, the shaft of which is intersected By two transverse beams, the upper one being the smaller. See illust. (2) of cross. -- patriarchal dispensation, the divine dispensation under which the Patriarchs lived before the law given by moses.