FATHERLESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does fatherless mean? 

• FATHERLESS (adjective)
  The adjective FATHERLESS has 2 senses:

1. having no living father

2. not having a known or legally responsible father

  Familiarity information: FATHERLESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FATHERLESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having no living father

Similar:

parentless; unparented (having no parent or parents or not cared for by parent surrogates)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not having a known or legally responsible father

Similar:

illegitimate (of marriages and offspring; not recognized as lawful)

 Context examples 

She would not, she declared, lose money that belonged to her fatherless boy; If none of the rest of you dare, she said, Jim and I dare.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I have heerd her tell, said Mr. Peggotty, as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Hope and keep busy, and whatever happens, remember that you never can be fatherless.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

God protect and keep my fatherless boy!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)