Final answer:
A thread that cannot be paired with its owning driver by the threads plugin is referred to as an orphan thread.
Step-by-step explanation:
When the operating system's scheduler is managing the execution of threads, it can sometimes encounter a situation where a thread is running but its associated driver or process has terminated or is no longer present. Such threads are called orphan threads because they no longer have a parent process to manage them.
A thread refers to a single sequential flow of activities being executed in a process; it is also known as the thread of execution or the thread of control.
An orphan process is a process that is still running but whose parent process no longer exists (either killed or exited). The OS re-parents an orphan process when its parent process dies. This means that another running process that got started before the orphan process adopts the orphan process. This term is used in the context of computer programming and operating systems.