"'Ah!' cried Brass. 'That's affecting, truly affecting. A poor widow struggling to maintain her orphans in decency and comfort, is a delicious picture of human goodness.--Put down your hat, Kit.' "

I was surprised to see Dickens calling Kit an orphan, while his mother is alive. But Webster 1913 surprised me by sayhing that the word could be used that way.

I was surprised, too.

Did you notice the meaning of 'orphan' when it's the first line of a paragraph in printing that appears at the bottom of the column? That's rather dear, isn't it?

Indonesian has yatim = fatherless (child), piatu = motherless (child), and yatim piatu = orphan

Bingley

Oh, I'm certainly not laughing at the actuality of being a fatherless, motherless orphan, please do understand, but I was somehow delighted to read this cleverness of combining these two specific Indonesian words, Bingley.

Haven't you mentioned this before? Reading it this morning rang a little Indonesian bell at the back of my head. Maybe it was some other word that followed the same track, but I don't think so.

In any case, it's good to be reminded of those times that other languages quite outdo English, we with our enormous vocabulary. It keeps us humble! And here the Indonesian language has quite outdone us in specificity and efficiency. They have one word for fatherless orphan, one word for motherless orphan, and only two words for our fatherless, motherless orphan unless, of course, we say something like 'orphan outright.'