When one has lost both parents due to death the word orphan is used. This word is generally but not always used for children. It can in spoken English also be used for adults.
My question is what about the loss of one parent? Is there a word for this?
Motherless or fatherless are terms used to refer to a child whose mother or father has died (or does not live with them).
Merriam-Webster has an entry for half-orphan, meaning someone with only one living parent.
They say specifically a child, which would match the usual usage of "orphan" (as mentioned in the question), but it might be used of an adult sometimes, either jocularly or by extension.
This doesn't distinguish which parent is dead, but could be combined with a further explanation if it matters.
For completeness, it's worth mentioning that orphan itself is sometimes used in this way. This is indicated in its Merriam-Webster definition:
a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents
[link; emphasis mine]
In my experience, this usage is usually found only when translating a foreign-language word that means "a child who's lost one or both parents", or at least, in contexts where there's a salient foreign language with such a word; for example, Jewish religious discussions use orphan in this way [example] because of Hebrew yatom, and descriptions of French law use orphan in this way [example] because of French orphelin.
I would not expect a typical English-speaker to be familiar with this usage, so I'd recommend it only in situations where the context makes it clear, or where it doesn't matter if some readers misunderstand it.
tung? Women to wimmen? He learnt 28 languages and felt English was too complicated so he complicated it more! Don't get me started on turtleneck, jumper or other words or other opposite meanings that only make it more complicated. Even if other BrE dictionaries have it AmE is not a good baseline .. at least not in other countries.
It requires a bit of rewording the sentence, but the term single-parent household is commonly used to refer to growing up in such a scenario, though this doesn't just refer to a parent who died but also parents who divorced or were never married to begin with. ("Orphan" doesn't necessarily require the death of both or either of the parents either, just that the child be somehow separated from them, which can happen in other ways as well.)
