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.

Simplified etymology

Waif comes from Old French gaif, probably of Scandinavian origin. In medieval law it denoted ownerless property that passed to the lord of the manor if unclaimed; only in the 17th century did it develop the sense of a homeless or neglected person.

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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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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