Fatherlessness
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The state or quality of being fatherless (not having a (living) father). uncountable
"Speaking about the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young fatherless child thinking: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly — I don’t know what the reason is.”"
Example
More examples"Speaking about the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young fatherless child thinking: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly — I don’t know what the reason is.”"
Etymology
From fatherless + -ness.
More for "fatherlessness"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.