All-Father

English

Alternative forms

• Allfather

Etymology

all +‎ father. The sense used to refer to Odin was a calque of Old Norse Alfǫðr.

Proper noun

the All-Father

1. The chief god of a pantheon.
2. (Germanic paganism, Norse mythology) Odin.

Noun

All-Father (plural All-Fathers)

1. A supreme being; a god who rules over all others.
   • 1891, Philip Hankinson Newnham, The All-father: Sermons Preached in a Village Church, page 27:

     Our first lesson is that God is a Father ; the second, that He is an All-Father ; that His Fatherhood is a fact in which others, without any limit perceptible to us, have an equal share with ourselves.

   • 1913, James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, page 737:

     At a primitive stage this is sometimes (e.g. with the Australians) scarcely regarded as communion with a specific divinity or divinities, yet the All-Fathers and the mythical beings fill an important rôle in these rites, while at a more developed stage the rites have a close connexion with chthonic or heavenly powers.

   • 2010, Harold W. Montzka, The Separation of Heaven and Earth:

     The Arunta totemic system could not coexist with an All-Father.

Anagrams

• earthfall