nurse

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English [edit]

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Etymology [edit]

Variant form of the archaic nourice, from Old French norrice, from Latin nutricius (“that nourishes”), from nutrix (“wet nurse”), from nutrire (“to suckle”).

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

nurse (plural nurses)

  1. (archaic) A wet-nurse.
  2. A person (usually a woman) who takes care of other people’s young.
    They hired a nurse to care for their young boy
  3. A person trained to provide care for the sick.
    The nurse made her rounds through the hospital ward

Usage notes [edit]

  • The noun nurse, in its current senses, does not perforce refer to a woman, and in fact, it frequently refers to a man; nonetheless, many speakers apparently consider female nurses to be the default case. Such speakers sometimes use locutions such as male nurse in reference to a male nurse, even when the nurse's maleness is already clear from context; for example, the phrasing "he was a male nurse" is quite well attested, despite its seeming redundancy.

Translations [edit]

wet nurse — see wet nurse
person who takes care of other people's young
person trained to provide care for the sick
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb [edit]

nurse (third-person singular simple present nurses, present participle nursing, simple past and past participle nursed)

  1. to breast feed
    She believes that nursing her baby will make him strong and healthy.
  2. to care for the sick
    She nursed him back to health.
  3. to treat kindly and with extra care
    She nursed the rosebush and that season it bloomed.
  4. to drink slowly
  5. to foster, to nourish
    Many nurse this humanitarian idea which is not specifically Christian.

Usage notes [edit]

In sense “to drink slowly”, generally negative and particularly used for someone at a bar, suggesting they either cannot afford to buy another drink or are too miserly to do so. By contrast, sip is more neutral.

Synonyms [edit]

Translations [edit]

to breast feed
to care for the sick
to treat kindly and with extra care
to drink slowly
to foster, to nourish

Derived terms [edit]

See also [edit]

External links [edit]

Anagrams [edit]

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