This adjective means 'without father,' either literally (orphaned, fatherless) or in the sense of unknown paternity. It could describe deities conceived without fathers, orphans who lost their fathers, or persons of uncertain parentage. Hebrews 7:3 uses it typologically of Melchizedek, who appears in Scripture 'without father, without mother, without genealogy'—not that he literally had no parents, but that Scripture's silence about his lineage makes him a fitting type of Christ's eternal priesthood, which depends on divine sonship rather than human descent.