begetter

beget +‎ -er

begetter (plural begetters)

1. A procreator; one who begets.
   • 1681, John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Dublin, p. 17,

     Our fond Begetters, who would never die,

     Love but themselves in their posteritie.

   • 1917, Thomas Hardy, “The Pedigree” in Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses, London: Macmillan, p. 63,

     It was a mirror now,

     And in it a long perspective I could trace

     Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each

     All with the family look,

     Whose names had since been inked down in their place

     On the recorder’s book,

     Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow.

2. (figuratively) An originator; a creator.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Shake-speares Sonnets, London: Thomas Thorpe, Dedication,

     To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr. W. H. all happinesse and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth.

   • 1911, Saki, “Tobermory” in The Chronicles of Clovis, London: John Lane, 1912, p. 30,

     He was neither a wit nor a croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur theatricals.

   • 1980, Doris Lessing, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 3,

     Rumours are the begetters of gossip. Even more are they the begetters of song.

   • 2015, Ayaz Amir, “So what else should Christians do?” The News International, 17 March, 2015,

     As the sponsor and begetter of extremism, it was only the army which could take on religious extremism along the north-western marches and the ‘secular’ brand of terrorism down south in Karachi.