Waif

Likewise, a person fleeing their home for purposes of safety (as in response to political oppression or natural disaster), is typically considered not a waif but a refugee.

[2] The characters Catherine in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights and Jo, the crossing sweeper in Charles Dickens' 1852 novel Bleak House are waifs.

"Some seven years ago...there appeared the remarkable saga of Manjiro, the shipwrecked Japanese waif who was rescued and brought to the United States by a Yankee whaling captain.

A waif was an item of ownerless and unclaimed property found on a landowner's territory, while a stray referred to a domestic animal that had wandered onto the land.

A grant of waif and stray permitted the landowner to take ownership of such goods or animals if they remained unclaimed after a set period of time.

In late medieval England, the management of waifs and strays required the coordination and cooperation of lords and the local communities they presided over.

The psychedelic rock song "Black and White Sunshine" by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, from the 2017 album Who Built the Moon?, contains the lyrics "these are the glory days for the waifs and the strays".

[9] The phrase "waif flora" refers to plant species that occur on oceanic islands due to chance long-distance dispersion of seeds.

The term "waif" was seemingly ubiquitous in the 1990s, with heroin chic fashion and models such as Kate Moss and Jaime King on the runways and in advertisements.

Daily Mirror columnist Sue Carroll wrote: The supermodel, looking like a throwback to the 'heroin chic' era of waif-like undernourished models, was an X-ray of her old self, skeletally thin with greasy hair, blue lips, a cold sore and sunken eyes.