orphan means deprived of parents (also orphaned). It carries an Arena rating of 1629, earned across 7 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, orphan ranks #1,090 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,109 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,136 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,594 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
orphan is pronounced /ˈɔːfən/.
Why “orphan” is a great word
A person, especially a child, whose parents have died or have permanently abandoned them; also used as an adjective meaning deprived of parents or unsupported. From Late Middle English, from Late Latin *orphanus*, from Ancient Greek ὀρφανός (orphanós, 'without parents, fatherless'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃órbʰos ('bereft'). Unlike a 'foundling'—an infant discovered after being abandoned, a story beginning with strangers—or an 'heir'—a title concerned with legal succession and property—an orphan is defined purely by a vacancy, by the stark and permanent subtraction of origin. It is the empty chair at the breakfast table, the unclaimed hand in a crowded street, the silence where a lullaby should be—a state of being where the past has been severed, leaving the future to build itself upon a void.
Etymology
Late Middle English, from Late Latin orphanus, from Ancient Greek ὀρφανός (orphanós, “without parents, fatherless”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃órbʰos. PIE word *h₃órbʰos Cognate with Sanskrit अर्भ (árbha), Latin orbus (“orphaned”), Old High German erbi, arbi (German Erbe (“heir”)), Old English ierfa (“heir”). More at erf.
adj
- Deprived of parents (also orphaned).e.g.“She is an orphan child.”
- Remaining after the removal of some form of support.e.g.“With its government funding curtailed, the gun registry became an orphan program.”
noun
- A person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.
- A person, especially a minor, whose parents have permanently abandoned them.
- A young animal with no mother.
- Anything that is unsupported, as by its source, provider or caretaker, by reason of the supporter's demise or decision to abandon.
- A single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.
- Any unreferenced object.e.g.“An orphan isn't harmful in a language that has garbage collection, such as Java. However, reducing the number of orphans can be expected to improve code performance.” — 2003, David D. Riley, The Object of Data Abstraction and Structures Using Java, page 234:
verb
- To deprive of parents (used almost exclusively in the passive).e.g.“What do you do when you come across two orphaned polar bear cubs?”
- To make unavailable, as by removing the last remaining pointer or reference to.e.g.“When you removed that image tag, you orphaned the resized icon.”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).