Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A child whose parents are dead.
- n. A child who has been deprived of parental care and has not been adopted.
- n. A young animal without a mother.
- n. One that lacks support, supervision, or care: A lack of corporate interest has made the subsidiary an orphan.
- n. An orphan technology or product.
- n. A line of type beginning a new paragraph at the bottom of a column or page.
- n. A short line of type at the bottom of a paragraph, column, or page; a widow.
- adj. Deprived of parents.
- adj. Intended for orphans: an orphan home.
- adj. Lacking support, supervision, or care.
- adj. Not developed or marketed, especially on account of being commercially unprofitable: "an aggregation of every orphan technology at the Pentagon, stuff that's been around for years that nobody would buy” ( Harper's).
- v. To deprive (a child or young animal) of a parent or parents.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Bereft of parents; fatherless, motherless, or without either father or mother; bereaved: said of a child or a young and dependent person.
- Not under control or protection analogous to that of a parent; unprotected; unassisted.
- Of or belonging to a child bereft of either parent or of both parents.
- n. A child bereaved of one parent or of both parents, generally the latter.
- To reduce to the state of being an orphan; bereave of parents.
Wiktionary
- n. A person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.
- n. A young animal with no mother.
- n. Anything that is unsupported, as by its source, provider or caretaker, by reason of the supporter's demise or decision to abandon.
- n. A single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.
- n. Any unreferenced abstract object.
- adj. Deprived of parents (also term).
- adj. Remaining after the removal of some form of support.
- v. To deprive of parents (used almost exclusively in the passive)
- v. To make unavailable, as by unlinking the last remaining pointer to.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A child bereaved of both father and mother; sometimes, also, a child who has but one parent living.
- adj. Bereaved of parents, or (sometimes) of one parent.
- v. To cause to become an orphan; to deprive of parents.
WordNet 3.0
- n. someone or something who lacks support or care or supervision
- n. a young animal without a mother
- n. the first line of a paragraph that is set as the last line of a page or column
- n. a child who has lost both parents
- v. deprive of parents
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Late Latin orphanus, from Greek orphanos, orphaned; see orbh- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“She clenched her teeth and grimaced as if pronouncing the word orphan filled her mouth with castor oil.”
“It matters because the term orphan carries enormous emotional weight.”
“He was so sweet, but I was afraid that the moment he heard the word orphan, he would back away and pretend he never knew me.”
“That was how Angela had first met Myles’s mother, three weeks after discovering the meaning of the word orphan herself.”
“The budgeteers claim $630 million in cuts from what are called "orphan earmarks," or construction that never started, and $2 billion more for transportation projects, some of which were likely to be canceled.”
“My Year of Flops" covers some 50 underappreciated pictures; every troubled orphan is assessed and deemed a Failure, a Fiasco or a Secret Success.”
The Huffington Post: Book Review Roundup: Movie Flops, Reality TV And The Constitution
“Also gives us a strong First Amendment interest in orphan works.”
“The adopted orphan is Jewish just like the rest of us (in fact, one is barred from even mentioning to his face that he was not born Jewish, just as with all converts) and benefits from following Kashrut.”
“About a decade ago, I accidentally launched into a sub-hobby of genealogy -- one I refer to as orphan heirloom rescues.”
The Huffington Post: Megan Smolenyak: Send Your Orphan Heirlooms Home
“Against all odds, Jamal, an orphan from the slums of Mumbai, has correctly answered almost every single question on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘orphan’.
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®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
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ROT13 Pairs
Nabbed from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT-13#Letter_games_and_net_culture: words that become other existing words (or failing that, acronyms) when a Caesar shift of 13 places is applied to them.
aha, nun, ant, nag, balk, onyx, bar, one, barf, ones, be, or and 64 more...
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humanitarian
orphan, oppressed, laborer, immigrant, foreigner, widow, alien, microloan

gcastro saw the movie orphan and thats where i saw it Oct 31, 2010
PossibleUnderscore "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest Jul 29, 2009
milosrdenstvi Not to be mistaken for 'often'. Aug 20, 2008