Half-orphan

[FRITZ JUENGLING]

This is a most curious term.  I had always thought an orphan was a person who had lost at least ONE parent, but not necessarily both. Therefore, half-orphan is superfluous for me.
Fritz J

>>> gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM 06/07/05 02:20PM >>>
That seems like an oversight as well, then. The meaning of half-orphan
wasn't transparent to me when I saw it today. I was right in my guess at its
meaning, but I wasn't confident till I saw it defined.

Benjamin Barrett
Baking the World a Better Place
www.hiroki.us

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn

> Couldn't the absence of "half-orphan" and "half-orphaned"
> from dictionaries be attributable largely to the productivity
> of the formation process and transparency of its results?  I
> wouldn't expect "half-eaten" to get its own entry, for
> example, or "two-buttoned".