Foundelyng

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A young child who has been abandoned by its parents and taken in or cared for by another person
2. An infant left without parents or guardians, found and raised by strangers or an institution
3. A deserted little one discovered by others and looked after as a ward rather than a family member

Etymology: Before it meant a child left by strangers, this word meant simply something that had been found. Its Old English form, "fundling," was built from the verb "findan," to find, plus the suffix "-ling," which marks a person or thing associated with a quality or state, as in "darling" or "duckling." In the older sense, a found object and a found infant were both just things come upon by chance. Over time the meaning narrowed to human beings. Middle English spellings such as "foundelyng" show the word already tilting toward children. Institutions that took in abandoned infants came to be called foundling hospitals, a name that preserved the word's association with being found rather than with being wanted.