means A child whose parents have both died, or sometimes one — and, by extension, anything left alone and unsupported, like a single line of text stranded at the bottom of a page.

from From Greek 'orphanos,' meaning bereft or fatherless, which traveled through Latin 'orphanus' into Old French and then English. The Greek root reaches back to an ancient Indo-European word for 'deprived' — possibly a cousin of Latin 'orbus' (bereaved) and even of words meaning 'labor' or 'inheritance,' the idea being one who has lost what was owed to them. The typographic 'orphan' — a lonely word or line cut off from its paragraph — borrows the same ache much later.