Half-orphan

[sagehen]

>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".
~~~~~~~~~~
This makes sense to me.  My own understanding of "orphan" is a minor child
both of whose parents are dead (not merely absent).
A. Murie