orphannoun/ˈɔːfən/

• 1

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

  • Rudolf was the bold, bad Baron of traditional melodrama. Irene was young, as pretty as a picture, fresh from a music academy in England. He was the scion of an ancient noble family; she an orphan without money or friends.
• 2

  A person, especially a minor, whose parents have permanently abandoned them.

• 3

  A young animal with no mother.

• 4

  Anything that is unsupported, as by its source, provider or caretaker, by reason of the supporter's demise or decision to abandon.

• 5

  mediapublishingtypographyA single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.

• 6

  computingengineeringmathematicsAny unreferenced object.

  • An orphan isn't harmful in a language that has garbage collection, such as Java. However, reducing the number of orphans can be expected to improve code performance.

orphanadj/ˈɔːfən/

• 1

  Deprived of parents (also orphaned).

  • She is an orphan child.
• 2

  Remaining after the removal of some form of support.

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

orphanverb/ˈɔːfən/

• 1

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

  • What do you do when you come across two orphaned polar bear cubs?
• 2

  computingengineeringmathematicsTo 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.