nurse
UK /nɜːs/ · US /nɝs/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms nurses nursing nursed norice nourice nourse
- noun (informal) Anyone performing this role, regardless of training or profession. “My aunt was my nurse while I recuperated at home from surgery.”
- noun A medical worker performing this role, typically someone trained to provide such care but having credentials and rank below a doctor or physician assistant. “The nurse made her rounds through the hospital ward.”
- noun (healthcare) A medical worker, such as a registered nurse, having training, credentials, and rank above a nurse assistant.
- noun (archaic) A person (usually a woman) who takes care of other people’s children. “They hired a nurse to care for their young boy.”
- noun (figurative) One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, or fosters. “Eton College has been called "the chief nurse of England's statesmen".”
- noun (horticulture) A shrub or tree that protects a young plant.
- noun (nautical) A lieutenant or first officer who takes command when the captain is unfit for his place.
- noun A larva of certain trematodes, which produces cercariae by asexual reproduction.
- verb (transitive) To breastfeed: to feed (a baby) at the breast; to suckle. “She believes that nursing her baby will make him strong and healthy.”
- verb (intransitive) To breastfeed: to be fed at the breast.
- verb (transitive) To care for (someone), especially in sickness; to tend to. “She nursed him back to health.”
- verb (transitive) To tend gently and with extra care. “She nursed the rosebush and that season it bloomed.”
- verb (transitive) To manage or oversee (something) with care and economy.
- verb (transitive, informal) To drink (a beverage) slowly, so as to make it last. “Rob was nursing a small beer.”
- verb (transitive, figuratively) To cultivate or persistently entertain (an attitude, usually negative) in one's mind; to brood or obsess over. “to nurse a grudge”
- verb (transitive) To hold closely to one's chest. “Would you like to nurse the puppy?”
- noun A nurse shark or dogfish.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
husband sip dwell on feed harbor nanny nursemaid harbour hold entertain breastfeed suckle suck wet-nurse lactate give suck
Etymology
From Middle English norice, from Old French norrice, from Late Latin nūtrīcia, noun based on Latin nūtrīcius (“that which nourishes”), from nūtrīx (“wet nurse”), from nūtriō (“to suckle”).
Uncertain; earlier (16th century) nusse, nuse. Perhaps from huss, through metanalysis of "an huss" as "a nuss".
Webster’s 1913
- noun One who nourishes; a person who supplies food, tends, or brings up; as: (a) A woman who has the care of young children; especially, one who suckles an infant not her own. (b) A person, especially a woman, who has the care of the sick or infirm.
- noun One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, fosters, or the like.
- verb To nourish; to cherish; to foster; as: (a) To nourish at the breast; to suckle; to feed and tend, as an infant.
- verb To bring up; to raise, by care, from a weak or invalid condition; to foster; to cherish; --applied to plants, animals, and to any object that needs, or thrives by, attention. "To nurse the saplings tall." Milton.
Etymology [OE. nourse, nurice, norice, OF. nurrice, norrice, nourrice, F. nourrice, fr. L. nutricia nurse, prop., fem. of nutricius that nourishes; akin to nutrix, -icis, nurse, fr. nutrire to nourish. See Nourish, and cf. Nutritious.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “nurse”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details