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Nurse   /nərs/   Listen
noun
Nurse  n.  
1.
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.
2.
One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, fosters, or the like. "The nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise."
3.
(Naut.) A lieutenant or first officer, who is the real commander when the captain is unfit for his place.
4.
(Zool.)
(a)
A peculiar larva of certain trematodes which produces cercariae by asexual reproduction. See Cercaria, and Redia.
(b)
Either one of the nurse sharks.
Nurse shark. (Zool.)
(a)
A large arctic shark (Somniosus microcephalus), having small teeth and feeble jaws; called also sleeper shark, and ground shark.
(b)
A large shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum), native of the West Indies and Gulf of Mexico, having the dorsal fins situated behind the ventral fins.
To put to nurse, or To put out to nurse, to send away to be nursed; to place in the care of a nurse.
Wet nurse, Dry nurse. See Wet nurse, and Dry nurse, in the Vocabulary.


verb
Nurse  v. t.  (past & past part. nursed; pres. part. nursing)  
1.
To nourish; to cherish; to foster; as:
(a)
To nourish at the breast; to suckle; to feed and tend, as an infant.
(b)
To take care of or tend, as a sick person or an invalid; to attend upon. "Sons wont to nurse their parents in old age." "Him in Egerian groves Aricia bore, And nursed his youth along the marshy shore."
2.
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." "By what hands (has vice) been nursed into so uncontrolled a dominion?"
3.
To manage with care and economy, with a view to increase; as, to nurse our national resources.
4.
To caress; to fondle, as a nurse does.
To nurse billiard balls, to strike them gently and so as to keep them in good position during a series of caroms.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Nurse" Quotes from Famous Books



... (for the schools in those days were held in the market-place), this Claudius seized her, affirming that she was born of a woman that was a slave, and was therefore by right a slave herself. The maiden standing still for fear, the nurse that attended her set up a great cry and called the citizens to help. Straightway there was a great concourse, for many knew the maiden's father Virginius, and Icilius to whom she was betrothed. Then said Claudius, ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... on my back," he said, terrified. "No, I won't," said Lilly. Aaron frowned curiously on his nurse. "Mind you don't let me," he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... father clam-bered back into his place. Strong hands grasped the oars, and by and by all were safe in the lighthouse. There Grace proved to be no less tender as a nurse than she had been brave as a sailor. She cared most kindly for the ship-wrecked men until the storm had died away and they were strong enough to ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... the dawn of his day, betook himself to Hiva, a rock, bleak, barren, waterless. Why, O Princess, if not for purification, and because God of preference has founded his dwelling there, wasting it indeed the better to nurse his goodness in a perfected solitude? Granting this, why may I not assert without shocking you that the sons of the desert are ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 7, Hom. 82, p. 788, he vehemently exhorts the faithful to approach the holy table with a burning thirst and earnest desire to suck in the spiritual milk, as it were, from the divine breasts. As children throw themselves into the bosom of their nurse or mother, and eagerly suck their breast, so ought we with far greater ardor to run to the sacred mysteries, to draw into our hearts, as the children of God, the grace of his Holy Spirit. To be deprived of this heavenly food ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler


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