Word.ws English Dictionary

empty nester

empty nester noun: a person whose children have grown up and left home.

Noun

empty nester (plural empty nesters)

  1. A person whose children have grown up and left home.
    • In recent years, however, the “syndrome” aspect of becoming an empty nester has receded to the background as Ageless Explorers have begun to embrace the years when they are free to play and do as they want again.2005, Ken Dychtwald, Daniel J. Kadlec, The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 31
    • “When empty nesters talk about the teenagers,” the comedian Jim Gaffigan quipped, “they always sound like they’re describing a hurricane: ‘My wife and I thought we were prepared; we lost everything!’”2025 August 10, Don Riddell, “Now that my kids are off to college, what’s this empty nester dad to do?”, in CNN

Forms of empty nester

pluralempty nesters

Origin of empty nester

From empty nest + -er.

Questions about empty nester

What does empty nester mean?
Empty nester means a person whose children have grown up and left home.
What part of speech is empty nester?
Empty nester is a noun.
What is the plural of empty nester?
The plural of empty nester is empty nesters.

Words near empty nester in the dictionary

  1. empty morpheme
  2. empty morphemes
  3. empty morphs
  4. empty nest
  5. empty nest syndrome
  6. empty nester
  7. empty nesters
  8. empty nesting
  9. empty nests
  10. empty net goal
  11. empty net goals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: empty nester (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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