orphan

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A child whose parents are dead.
• noun A child who has been deprived of parental care and has not been adopted.
• noun A young animal that has been prematurely separated from its parents or its mother.
• noun One that lacks support, supervision, or care.
• noun A technology or product that has not been developed or marketed, especially on account of being commercially unprofitable.
• noun Printing A very short line of type at the bottom of a paragraph, column, or page.
• adjective Deprived of parents.
• adjective Intended for orphans.
• adjective Lacking support, supervision, or care.
• adjective Being a technology or product that is an orphan.
• transitive verb To deprive (a child or young animal) of a parent or parents.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Bereft of parents; fatherless, motherless, or without either father or mother; bereaved: said of a child or a young and dependent person.
• Not under control or protection analogous to that of a parent; unprotected; unassisted.
• Of or belonging to a child bereft of either parent or of both parents.
• noun A child bereaved of one parent or of both parents, generally the latter.
• To reduce to the state of being an orphan; bereave of parents.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adjective Bereaved of parents, or (sometimes) of one parent.
• noun A child bereaved of both father and mother; sometimes, also, a child who has but one parent living.
• noun (Law) a court in some of the States of the Union, having jurisdiction over the estates and persons of orphans or other wards.
• transitive verb To cause to become an orphan; to deprive of parents.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A person, especially a minor, both or (rarely) one of whose parents have died.
• noun A young animal with no mother.
• noun figuratively Anything that is unsupported, as by its source, provider or caretaker, by reason of the supporter's demise or decision to abandon.
• noun typography A single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.
• noun computing Any unreferenced object.
• adjective Deprived of parents (also orphaned).
• adjective by extension, figuratively Remaining after the removal of some form of support.
• verb transitive To deprive of parents (used almost exclusively in the passive)
• verb transitive (computing) To make unavailable, as by unlinking the last remaining pointer to.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun someone or something who lacks support or care or supervision
• noun a young animal without a mother
• noun the first line of a paragraph that is set as the last line of a page or column
• noun a child who has lost both parents
• verb deprive of parents