aaaaaaaa[49] – n. parent who outlives a child:
Are the words orphan and widow just vestiges from a time when they were classes of people who required legal guardians to take control of their finances and property? Would the English language have names for aaaaaaaaa[49] a aaaaaaaaa[74], a semiaaaaaaaaa[74], and a aaaaaaaaa[41] if they were legal entities that required custodial care?
I am in this category myself, so I have thought much about the absence of this word. Difficult as it is for me to be in this unnamed state, I think that the normality of child-death in the pre-industrial world helps explain it. The unusual thing, given high child mortality rates, would be to see all one’s children live into full adulthood, not to have one or more predecease the parents.
Thank you Penny for starting up a conversation around this. This is karen even though it lists me as an * (long story about website format) You are raising an excellent point. We do take for granted how common it used to be to lose a child. But then again, we don’t only name unusual experiences. We name things that we consider meaningful. Night happens every day but we name it because the lack of light changes what is possible or expected at that time. It is curious to me that widow came into the English language much, much earlier… Read more »
I am currently reading Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann. One of the stories, “Sh’khol”, contains this passage: “A novella had arrived from the publisher in Tel Aviv eight months before, a beautifully written story by an Arab Israeli from Nazareth: an important piece of work, she thought. She had begun immediately to translate it, the story of a middle-aged couple who had lost their two children. She had come upon the phrase sh’khol. She cast around for a word translated, but there was no proper match. There were words, of course, for widow, widower, and orphan, but none,… Read more »
Nicole, Thank you for sharing this. I am excited to find words in other languages that cover this idea. I am going to see if I can find a linguist who focuses on either Arabic or Hebrew now to learn more about these words and will keep you posted on what I learn. This is wonderful. Thanks again!