motherless
Britishadjective
adverb
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The two motherless African-American children at the heart of “Kin,” Vernice Irene Davis and Annie Kay Henderson, who grow up as “cradle friends” in Honeysuckle, La., are easy to feel for.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026
Delila Combs, 18, pleaded: "We can't watch our baby sister grow up fatherless the same way we grew up motherless... Please, please give our family the chance to heal."
From BBC • Oct. 3, 2025
Having searched at length for quantitative research into the particular long-term trauma faced by motherless daughters, I’d resurfaced with only a thin stack of close-enough studies.
From Salon • May 11, 2024
Her thoughtful look at how her identity as a refugee intertwines with that of a motherless daughter speaks to feelings both specific to the displaced and familiar to anyone afflicted with loneliness.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 29, 2023
And stitching it all together, she could not understand how Thula could have been so cold to a motherless child, nor how Joe’s father could have been so impassive in the face of it all.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
