Meanings
- not comparableHaving no (living) parent.
Firstly, then, who were these parentless children who seem to have been present in a sizeable proportion of households...
1973, Michael Gordon, The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective1 more example
No, if you wanted to free yourself of feelings you didn't want to be an Engineer. Growing up parentless on Ditch Street, though; that would really do the trick.
2011, Philip Reeve, Scrivener's Moon, Scholastic, →ISBN, page 158 - not comparablecomputingHaving no parent in a data structure.
Two consequences of parentless elements complicate the rules.
2004, Michael Kay, XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference1 more example
The top-level window is parentless and forms the root of the hierarchy.
2012, Michael Lawrence, John Verzani, Programming Graphical User Interfaces in R, page 19
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivehaving no parent or parents or not cared for by parent surrogates
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Englishparent
- Proto-Indo-European*lewh₁-
- Proto-Indo-European*lewHs-
- Proto-Germanic*leusaną
- Proto-Germanic*lausaz
- Englishparentless
Translations
German elternlos
- elternloshaving no parent
Norwegian Bokmål foreldreløs, foreldrelaus
- foreldreløshaving no parent
- foreldrelaushaving no parent
Polish bez rodziców
- bez rodzicówhaving no parent
Swedish förälralös
- förälralöshaving no parent
Cite this entry
parentless. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parentless
“parentless.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parentless. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “parentless,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parentless.
Source: parentless on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.