nursed


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nurse

 (nûrs)
n.
1. A person trained to provide medical care for the sick or disabled, especially one who is licensed and works in a hospital or physician's office.
2.
a. A person employed to take care of a young child.
b. A woman employed to suckle children other than her own; a wet nurse.
3. One that serves as a nurturing or fostering influence or means: "Town life is the nurse of civilization" (C.L.R. James).
4. Zoology A worker ant or bee that feeds and cares for the colony's young.
v. nursed, nurs·ing, nurs·es
v.tr.
1. To serve as a nurse for: nursed the patient back to health.
2. To cause or allow to take milk from the breast or teat: a mother nursing her baby; whales nursing their young.
3. To try to cure by special care or treatment: nurse a cough with various remedies.
4. To treat carefully, especially in order to prevent pain: He nursed his injured knee by shifting his weight to the other leg.
5. To manage or guide carefully; look after with care; foster: nursed her business through the depression. See Synonyms at nurture.
6. To bear privately in the mind: nursing a grudge.
7. To consume slowly, especially in order to conserve: nursed one drink all evening.
v.intr.
1. To serve as a nurse.
2.
a. To take milk from the breast or teat; suckle: The baby is nursing. Puppies nurse for a few weeks.
b. To feed an offspring from the breast or teat: a mother who's nursing; what to feed cows when they're nursing.
[Middle English norice, nurse, wet nurse, from Old French norrice, from Vulgar Latin *nutrīcia, from Late Latin nūtrīcia, from feminine of Latin nūtrīcius, that suckles, from nūtrīx, nūtrīc-, wet nurse; see (s)nāu- in Indo-European roots.]
nurs′er n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.nursed - (of an infant) breast-fed
suckled
breast-fed - (of an infant) fed milk from the mother's breast
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
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(64) The idea of a specific working hours held no meaning for Augusta nurse Sadie Curry, for like Ella Newsom, she took "no account of the lapse[s] of time." (65) Newsom and Curry "nursed both, night and day," in order to insure the well-being of their new patients.
Battle time: Gender, modernity, and confederate hospitals
[its] natural sustenance"(1) - be wet nursed.(2) If human milk was wholly unavailable, doctors advised that cow's milk was the second-best alternative but, as one physician lectured mothers, "I say' best,' but in this connection the word is almost meaningless, for the difference between mother's milk and cow's milk is abysmal.
Cognizant of this, the Home's directors were "always glad to take all the wet-nurses" they could get and required the mothers living in the home with their babies to breastfeed their own baby as well as one other.(21) During 1874 alone the Home housed one hundred women, almost all "utterly homeless and friendless," who wet nursed infants.(22) But even with that extraordinary number at their disposal, the Home almost never had enough human milk to keep all their babies well.
"MERCENARY HIRELINGS" OR "A GREAT BLESSING"?: DOCTORS' AND MOTHERS' CONFLICTED PERCEPTIONS OF WET NURSES AND THE RAMIFICATIONS FOR INFANT FEEDING IN CHICAGO, 1871-1961

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