empty nest


noun
  1. a household in which one or more parents live after the children have left home: Our only child just moved into her first apartment, so we have an empty nest.

  2. a stage in a parent’s life after the children have left home.

Origin of empty nest

1
First recorded in 1885–90

Words Nearby empty nest

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use empty nest in a sentence

  • In the tree branches that clattered outside, her eyes fell on an empty nest.

    Jewel Weed | Alice Ames Winter
  • An empty nest, riddled by the wind, hung dishevelled from a twig.

    'way Down In Lonesome Cove | Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
  • Raising the now empty nest he threw it with all his might at Dominic, and both his fists after it.

    First in the Field | George Manville Fenn

Cultural definitions for empty nest

empty nest

The stage in a family's cycle when the children have grown up and left home to begin their own adult lives.

Notes for empty nest

For parents, the empty nest sometimes results in midlife anxiety.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Other Idioms and Phrases with empty nest

empty nest

The home of parents whose children have grown up and moved out. For example, Now that they had an empty nest, Jim and Jane opened a bed-and-breakfast. This expression, alluding to a nest from which baby birds have flown, gave rise to such related ones as empty-nester, for a parent whose children had moved out, and empty-nest syndrome, for the state of mind of parents whose children had left. [c. 1970]

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.