orphaned

1. 1
   adjective

   Having become an orphan through the death of one's parents.

   The charity finds homes for orphaned children whose parents died in the epidemic.

   The war left thousands of children orphaned and homeless.

   Similarparentless

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of orphan.

   He was orphaned at twelve and raised by his grandparents.

   Deleting the parent record orphaned every row that pointed to it.

   Note

   With people and animals the verb is nearly always passive: she was orphaned at five, the cubs were orphaned by poachers, while the active (the war orphaned her) is rare. Programmers use the active freely. Removing the last reference to an object orphans it, so nothing in the program can reach it; deleting a parent record orphans the rows that pointed to it, leaving them pointing at nothing.

3. 3
   adjective

   Abandoned by the person or people who had been responsible for it.

   Volunteers took over the orphaned software library after its maintainer stepped away.

   Regulators are trying to plug thousands of orphaned oil wells whose owners went bankrupt.

   Similarabandoned, deserted, forsaken, discarded, derelict

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