FILIAL DUTY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does filial duty mean? 

• FILIAL DUTY (noun)
  The noun FILIAL DUTY has 1 sense:

1. duty of a child to its parents

  Familiarity information: FILIAL DUTY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FILIAL DUTY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Duty of a child to its parents

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("filial duty" is a kind of...):

duty; obligation; responsibility (the social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "filial duty"):

obedience; respect (behavior intended to please your parents)

 Context examples 

His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more pathetic meaning from it than they had had before.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

As to his remark about his deserts, it was also not unnatural if you consider that he stood beside the dead body of his father, and that there is no doubt that he had that very day so far forgotten his filial duty as to bandy words with him, and even, according to the little girl whose evidence is so important, to raise his hand as if to strike him.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)