empty nest

American  

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.

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empty nest Cultural  

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

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empty nest Idioms  

1. 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]

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Discover More

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

Etymology

Origin of empty nest

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

As an empty nest looms, I have vowed to savor even the most mundane moment of this final school year.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 12, 2024

I’ve been steeling myself to face an empty nest for months now, but in many ways she is already gone.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 12, 2024

But today it suffers from the local version of empty nest syndrome.

From New York Times • Apr. 2, 2024

It's a different, twisted sort of empty nest syndrome that Joe realizes as his youngest children, the twins, are about to graduate from high school.

From Salon • Dec. 9, 2023

He was perched on my shoulder while I peered at an empty nest.

From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate