stepchild
Americannoun
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stepchildren
plural
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a child of one's spouse by a previous marriage.
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any person, organization, affiliate, project, etc., that is not properly treated, supported, or appreciated.
This agency is the stepchild when appropriations are handed out.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of stepchild
before 1000; Middle English; Old English stēopcild. See step-, child
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.
See Examples For:
An afterthought if not a redheaded stepchild, though expect affronted fellow media outlets to freak out because of what NBC News once was, not what it is.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
“It’ll basically illustrate, if we don’t already realize it, that walkability has been sort of a very forgotten stepchild of all of our transportation planning and building over the years.”
From Salon ● Jun. 3, 2026
One Moneyist Facebook Group member gave the flipside of your dilemma, from the perspective of a stepchild.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 11, 2025
West Sacramento has long been the region’s scrawny stepchild of a municipality.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2025
Virtually the same applies in Egyptology, in which the study of the Ptolemaic “late period” has long been the neglected stepchild of a discipline engrossed by the Rameseses and Thut- moses of high antiquity.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
At the time, she had a five-month-old baby and two stepchildren.
From BBC ● May 5, 2026
After a fall shatters his ankle, his stepchildren dump him with his daughter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
The most practical solution: Community property with right of survivorship or, as a halfway point, a clearly drafted life-estate agreement, ideally memorialized in a postnuptial agreement to fend off any disgruntled stepchildren.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 12, 2026
Dwana is also buried there, as are Pauline’s children, Pusser’s stepchildren, who were cremated but whose ashes lie in the Pusser plot.
From Slate ● Nov. 6, 2025
He returned to consciousness to find himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One.
From Calvary Alley by Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan
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.
