Word.ws English Dictionary

fatherlessness

fatherlessness noun: the state or quality of being fatherless (not having a (living) father).

Noun

fatherlessness (uncountable)

  1. The state or quality of being fatherless (not having a (living) father).
    • Speaking about the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young fatherless child thinking: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly — I don’t know what the reason is.”2007 October 16, Bob Herbert, “Tough, Sad and Smart”, in New York Times
    • Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis.2007 December 18, David Brooks, “The Obama-Clinton Issue”, in New York Times

Origin of fatherlessness

From fatherless + -ness.

Questions about fatherlessness

What does fatherlessness mean?
Fatherlessness means the state or quality of being fatherless (not having a (living) father).
What part of speech is fatherlessness?
Fatherlessness is a noun.

Words near fatherlessness in the dictionary

  1. fatherlandless
  2. fatherlands
  3. fatherlasher
  4. fatherlashers
  5. fatherless
  6. fatherlessness
  7. fatherlike
  8. fatherlily
  9. fatherline
  10. fatherlines
  11. fatherliness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fatherlessness (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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Cite this entry: “fatherlessness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fatherlessness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.