Motherless means having no mother. A motherless child, left motherless, motherless young.
It is used of children and of animals, and it is a heavy word — motherless carries the loss with it in a way that orphaned, which covers both parents, somehow does not. In wildlife rescue it is the standard description of young found alone. Note that the compound is Old English and unchanged, and every Germanic language builds it identically.
1adjectivemotherlessHaving no mother.
“The farmer bottle-fed the motherless lamb in the kitchen.”
motherless is a state of loss.
Old English modorleas is mother plus -less. Dutch moederloos and German mutterlos are built identically, and the word has not changed in a thousand years.
Proto-Germanic
*mōdērlausaz
Old English
mōdorlēas
Middle English
moderles
English, today
motherless
From Middle English moderles, from Old English mōdorlēas, from Proto-Germanic mōdērlausaz, equivalent to mother + less. Cognate with stq muurloos (“motherless”), Dutch moederloos (“motherless”), German mutterlos (“motherless”), Danish moderløs (“motherless”), Swedish moderlös (“motherless”), Icelandic móðurlaus (“motherless”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA