ORPHAN

Orphan

An orphan is a child whose parents are dead or have abandoned them permanently. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan. When referring to animals, only the mother's condition is usually relevant. If she has gone, the offspring is an orphan, regardless of the father's condition.

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orphan

Noun

  1. A person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.
  2. A young animal with no mother.
  3. Anything that is unsupported, as by its source, provider or caretaker, by reason of the supporter's demise or decision to abandon.
  4. A single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.
  5. Any unreferenced object.

Verb

  1. To deprive of parents (used almost exclusively in the passive)
    What do you do when you come across two orphaned polar bear cubs?
  2. To make unavailable, as by unlinking the last remaining pointer to.
    When you removed that image tag, you orphaned the resized icon.
    Removing categories orphans pages from the main category tree.

Adjective

  1. Deprived of parents (also ).
    She is an orphan child.
  2. Remaining after the removal of some form of support.
    With its government funding curtailed, the gun registry became an orphan program.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: orphan
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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