Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use orphan in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective, verb

Orphan means a person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died. Example: “She is an orphan child.”

Examples of orphan by meaning

nounA person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.

  • He was the scion of an ancient noble family; she an orphan without money or friends.1956, Delano Ames, chapter 9, in Crime out of Mind

nounAny unreferenced object.

  • An orphan isn't harmful in a language that has garbage collection, such as Java.2003, David D. Riley, The Object of Data Abstraction and Structures Using Java, page 234

adjectiveDeprived of parents (also orphaned).

  • She is an orphan child.

adjectiveRemaining after the removal of some form of support.

  • With its government funding curtailed, the gun registry became an orphan program.

verbTo deprive of parents (used almost exclusively in the passive).

  • What do you do when you come across two orphaned polar bear cubs?

verbTo make unavailable, as by removing the last remaining pointer or reference to.

  • When you removed that image tag, you orphaned the resized icon.
  • Removing categories orphans pages from the main category tree.

More sentences with orphan

  • His story is a mirror into the life of orphans growing up.From the entry mirror
  • When they saw the poor orphans, they were overwhelmed with tenderness for them.From the entry tenderness
  • I found an orphaned project, half-completed before its author quit, and decided to finish it.From the entry orphaned
  • Tragically, her disease is so rare that the only effective medicine is an orphan drug.From the entry orphan drug
  • I appeal to all of you to help the orphans.From the entry appeal
  • Posthumous orphans never even knew their fathers.From the entry posthumous
  • The sad eyes of the orphan tugged at my heartstrings.From the entry heartstrings
  • Realizing the tuxedo kitten was an orphan like me, I scooped her up and brought her inside.2023, Tara Conrad, Real Life Romance: Duke and Percy, unnumbered page. From the entry instalove
  • He is a Han Chinese and the orphan of the great hero Li Wencheng.2016, Reggie Hanlon, Tragedy on a Light-Year Scale. From the entry Han Chinese
  • I've done the cute orphan Mi'qitten before, so I thought I'd do Khloe as well!2016 October 24, KenshouHarpuia, Reddit. From the entry Mi'qitten
  • He is too busy to be encumbered with orphans,” Delleah said.2014, Barbara McMahon, The Nanny and the Sheikh, →ISBN. From the entry hot button
  • Marjorie handfeeds one of her many pets, an orphaned joey, at Campbell Town.2011, Danielle Wood, Housewife Superstar: The Very Best of Marjorie Bligh, page 97. From the entry handfeed
  • Orphaned at a young age, he found a father figure in the confident and committed al-Bahri.2008 July 21, Jonathan Mahler, “Hamdan: Guantánamo's Mystery Man”, in Time, retrieved 08 Jul 2014. From the entry father figure
  • You almost never hear of orphans being serial killed, and not because they aren't.2005 March 13, Offshore Eddie, “Re: Serial Killer DOs and DON'Ts”, in alt.true-crime (Usenet), retrieved 18 May 2022. From the entry serial kill
  • He came a cropper, and the girl was left an orphan and penniless.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 8. From the entry come a cropper
  • That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs.1908, L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. From the entry Mrs.
  • Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.2025 June 14, Nigel Andrews, “They don’t come any bigger”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN…. From the entry success has many fathers, failure is an orphan
  • “ the orphan crushing machine isn’t the problem, it’s that people are using the orphan crushing machine wrong”2023 August 9, @DreadBirate, X (post), archived from the original on 17 May 2024. From the entry orphan-crushing machine
  • The news story that Kama read was about an elderly person named Abibao in Qinggil County who had raised ten orphans.2021, Li Juan, translated by Jack Hargreaves and Yan Yan, Winter Pasture: One Woman's Journey with China's Kazakh Herders, 1st edition…. From the entry Qinggil
  • He breaks the bad news with a sweet paternal touch and enrols the orphan in his Hogwartsian school for precocious mutants.2019 June 7, Matthew Norman, “Let’s hope this phoenix never rises from the ashes”, in Evening Standard, page 28. From the entry Hogwartsian
  • An orphan among its peers, consecutive interpreting appears to have a short life and little if any luster.2017, Alexander V. Kozin, Consecutive Interpreting: An Interdisciplinary Study, Springer, →ISBN, page 1. From the entry interpreting
  • Cult films are adopted orphans and what defines them is the intensity of their fandom ‘beyond all reason’, as J.2016, I.Q. Hunter, Cult Film as a Guide to Life, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 3. From the entry cult film
  • The induction into a middle-class family of a street orphan would have been an extraordinary act at that time.2011, Graham Joyce, “Narrative and Regeneration: The Little Monsters Of Templeton by Lauren Groff”, in Danel Olson, editor, 21st-century…. From the entry pseudoincest
  • You of course might be a bit jealous of any family at all, since you are an orphan after all.2001, Alex Cain, Re: Alex Cain is..............exposed Group: rec.sport.pro-wrestling. From the entry incestophile
  • But apart, either looks like an orphan.1968 02, Men's Wear. From the entry suitjacket
  • Wrapping war orphans’ gifts are, left to right, Mmes.1948 November 14, Los Angeles Times, final edition, volume LXVII, Los Angeles, Calif.: Times-Mirror Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, part III, page…. From the entry Mrs. Santa Claus
  • Thousands of children were orphaned by the war, and the Church opened camps and orphanages for their care.1943, Beyond the Eight Horizons, page 49. From the entry Lichwan
  • Player character, orphan Jennifer, is adopted by a wealthy recluse and escorted to his creepy Norweigan mansion, along with her friends and teacher.2021 April, Sara Elsam, “The Making of Clock Tower”, in Retro Gamer, number 218, via EBSCOhost, →ISSN, page 70. From the entry Norweigan
  • Something happened to Quinn’s heart when he imagined Nicole, orphaned and sent off to live with a relative who had the un-auntly name of Freddie.2004, Roxanne St. Claire, Like a Hurricane, Silhouette Books, →ISBN, page 73. From the entry un-auntly
  • For example, in Plato's Republic, marriage was forbidden, wives were "communalized," and children were separated from their parents and considered orphans of the state.2003, David Levinson, Karen Christensen, Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, page 879. From the entry communalize
  • One is a cheerful and spunky orphan, another is a poor little rich girl. (The poor little rich girl speaks with a British accent.2003, Svetlana Boym, Ninochka, page 172. From the entry poor little rich girl
  • I have a tiny bit of respect of Angelina for adopting an orphan instead of populating the world with another (her own) flesh loaf.2002 July 20, Ida Kern, “Re: marriage destroyed by adopted flesh-loaf”, in alt.support.childfree (Usenet). From the entry flesh loaf
  • To assure herself of the safety of the procedure, the Princess first forced disenfranchised subjects -- several prisoners and an orphan -- to be variolated.1999 April 18, Jerome Groopman, “Best Medical Insight; Pox Britannica”, in The New York Times Magazine. From the entry variolate

Meaning of orphan

  1. noun A person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.
  2. noun A person, especially a minor, whose parents have permanently abandoned them.
  3. noun A young animal with no mother.

Full definition of orphan

Questions about orphan in a sentence

How do you use orphan in a sentence?
Orphan is used as a noun, adjective and verb. For example: “She is an orphan child.”
What is a short sentence with orphan?
“She is an orphan child.”
What does orphan mean?
Orphan means a person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: orphan (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use orphan in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/orphan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.