Word.ws English Dictionary

foundling

foundling noun: an abandoned child, left by its parent(s), often a baby left at a convent or similar safe place.

Noun

foundling (plural foundlings)

  1. An abandoned child, left by its parent(s), often a baby left at a convent or similar safe place.
    • foundling hospital
    • In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people.1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

foundling meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Arabic and Vietnamese

foundling in Tamil

கொக்காட்டல், காட்டுப்பிள்ளை, எடுப்புப் பிள்ளை, கூழைமை

foundling in Malayalam

orphan, abandoned infant, waif
അനാഥശിശു, അനാഥക്കുട്ടി, കണ്ടുകിട്ടിയ ശിശു, ഉപേക്ഷിക്കപ്പെട്ട ശിശു, യത്തീം, നാഥനില്ലാക്കുട്ടി

foundling in Arabic

abandoned child, left by its parent
لَقِيط laqīṭ, مَلْقُوط malqūṭ

foundling in Vietnamese

abandoned child, left by its parent
trẻ em bị bỏ rơi

Forms of foundling

pluralfoundlings

Origin of foundling

From Middle English foundlyng, fondeyng, variants of Middle English fyndling, fyndlyng. By surface analysis, found + -ling.

Words formed from foundling

Phrases with foundling

Questions about foundling

What does foundling mean?
Foundling means an abandoned child, left by its parent(s), often a baby left at a convent or similar safe place.
What is foundling in Tamil?
Foundling in Tamil is கொக்காட்டல், காட்டுப்பிள்ளை, எடுப்புப் பிள்ளை. See Foundling meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is foundling?
Foundling is a noun.
What is the plural of foundling?
The plural of foundling is foundlings.

Words near foundling in the dictionary

  1. founding member
  2. founding members
  3. founding mother
  4. founding mothers
  5. foundings
  6. foundling
  7. foundling wheel
  8. foundling wheels
  9. foundlinghood
  10. foundlings
  11. foundouk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foundling (page history and authors); foundling (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); foundling (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-foundling.wav.

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