motherless child
1
3.7
- noun
:
niño huérfano
- As a motherless child, he often sought the comfort of friends to fill the void left by his absence.
- raising a motherless child
Examples
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Poor, motherless children.
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In a Native American way of life, tradition is equated with the mother; however, since many traditions have been destroyed, the Native Americans have often become motherless children.
Academic text (1997) -
But sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
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Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
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Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
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Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
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Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Fiction book (1995) -
They were good-natured, kind to the motherless children.
Fiction book (1996) -
After losing her mother at a young age, she felt like a motherless child navigating the world alone.
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The orphanage cared for many motherless children who longed for parental love and attention.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a child whose mother is absent or has died' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'motherless' (lacking a mother) with 'child' (a minor). This is a regular morphological composition using the productive English suffix '-less' and is cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents should understand it.
Etymology
Motherless child paints a simple picture: a child who is motherless, meaning 'without a mother'. In old stories and everyday speech this image showed a child who had lost or never had a mother's care, so today the phrase means 'a child whose mother has died, is absent, or is not in their life'.