Isn't "dangling" a misnomer?

I've been reading and rereading the git documentation and tripping slightly over the word "dangling", as in "dangling object". In traditional use, one might talk of a dangling pointer A, where A points to B and B is destroyed/invalidated/etc. As a literal example, A might be a machine address like 0x8808FEFE, which points to an area of memory that once had a particular meaning, but now does not, leaving the pointer "dangling".

This way the git docs use this term seems to be the other way around---the object is still there and valid, but there are no pointers to it. In order for dangling to be going on, it seems like you'd have to have a SHA1 hash for an object that is no longer in the repository. (If there's been previous discussion of this, I couldn't find it.)

What about an alternative term like "orphaned" or "unreferenced"? The former is a bit more suggestive, but unfortunately might be confusing since the terms like ancestors, parents, etc., are already being used to talk about commit trees, which really is an orthogonal topic. The latter term seems like it would work, though it does sound a bit sterile.

Mike