Definition of "motherless" []

• Having no living mother. (adjective)
• Having no known mother. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As someone whose mother died when she was 15, and mom was 37, the fear of leaving my children motherless is sometimes incapacitating, and particularly so since I do have a minor heart condition."
• "Soulless tombs unborn children dread life after birth in motherless wombs. my 594th poem"
• "Innocent was in very truth "motherless" -- but so she had always been -- for a mother who deserts her child is worse than a mother dead."