waif

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   especially historical: a homeless, abandoned, or neglected person, especially a child

   The novel follows a waif who survives by sleeping near the market.

2. 2
   noun

   a stray or ownerless thing, or a fragment that drifts or arrives by chance

   Only a few waifs of distant music reached the field beyond the town.

From Anglo-Norman waif, a legal term for ownerless goods, related to Old French gaif and the Germanic source of waive. The word broadened from abandoned property to anything stray or drifting and then to a homeless or forsaken person.

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