ABSTRACT
Words are too often used loosely in ordinary speech; and, as a result, the reader comes to regard them as meaning something different from their real meaning. The word ‘orphan’ is an example. The ordinary person in the street would be likely to regard the word ‘orphan’ as meaning a person both of whose parents have died. Reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, however, shows that, whilst a person who has lost both parents by death is an orphan, so also is a person who has lost either parent. A person whose mother is dead but whose father is alive is, therefore, an ‘orphan’.
