Half-orphan

[Barbara Need]

>  >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

Yes. The minor child part is especially important for my
understanding of "orphan"--which I why I do not think of myself as a
half-orphan (despite the loss of my father in January) or of my
mother as an orphan.

Barbara