Word.ws English Dictionary

empty nests

empty nests is the plural of empty nest.

Meaning of empty nest

Noun

empty nest (plural empty nests)

  1. A home or a family where the children have grown up and moved away.
    • One woman with a full-on and demanding career e-mailed me to say ‘This empty nest thing is no joke. I didn't realise it would hit me so hard. It is day three of my daughter being gone and I have to resist the urge to weep every time I go past her room.’2011, Celia Dodd, The Empty Nest: Your Changing Family, Your New Direction, Hachette UK, →ISBN
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see empty, nest.

Questions about empty nests

What is empty nests the plural of?
Empty nests is the plural of empty nest.

Words near empty nests in the dictionary

  1. empty nest
  2. empty nest syndrome
  3. empty nester
  4. empty nesters
  5. empty nesting
  6. empty nests
  7. empty net goal
  8. empty net goals
  9. empty netter
  10. empty netters
  11. empty nose syndrome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: empty nests (page history and authors); empty nest (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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