orphan
a child who has lost both parents through death, or, less commonly, one parent.
a young animal that has been deserted by or has lost its mother.
a person or thing that is without protective affiliation, sponsorship, etc.: The committee is an orphan of the previous administration.
Printing.
(especially in word processing) the first line of a paragraph when it appears alone at the bottom of a page.
bereft of parents.
of or for orphans: an orphan home.
not authorized, supported, or funded; not part of a system; isolated; abandoned: an orphan research project.
lacking a commercial sponsor, an employer, etc.: orphan workers.
to deprive of parents or a parent through death: He was orphaned at the age of four.
Informal. to deprive of commercial sponsorship, an employer, etc.: The recession has orphaned many experienced workers.
Origin of orphan
1Other words from orphan
- or·phan·hood, noun
- half-orphan, noun
- un·or·phaned, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use orphan in a sentence
Extreme poverty, which affects 1.4 billion people, is the leading cause of orphanhood.
The members of a rookery have also been observed to take turns in supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphanhood.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation | Robert ChambersStatira never forgot Major Bugbee's kindness to her in her lonely orphanhood.
Surely, never was orphanhood more helpless, more hopeless, than the orphanhood of these poor Galileans.
Sermons | J. B. LightfootTo her it was a new experience, for since her orphanhood she had scarcely been away from Valencia.
Meg, of Valencia | Myra Williams Jarrell
But there were some differences between Em'ly's orphanhood and mine, it appeared.
David Copperfield | Charles Dickens
British Dictionary definitions for orphan
/ (ˈɔːfən) /
a child, one or (more commonly) both of whose parents are dead
(as modifier): an orphan child
printing the first line of a paragraph separated from the rest of the paragraph by occurring at the foot of a page
(tr) to deprive of one or both parents
Origin of orphan
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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