noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A residential institution for the care and protection of orphans. countable, uncountable

   "Near-synonym: children's home (not always different)"

2. 2
   a public institution for the care of orphans wordnet
3. 3
   Orphanhood; the state of being an orphan. countable, obsolete, uncountable
4. 4
   the condition of being a child without living parents wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

asylumchildren's homechildren's homehalfway househomehospice

Example

More examples

"He delivered the package to the orphanage."

Etymology

Attested since the 1570s; orphan + -age.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.