nurse

• nourice (archaic)
• norice (obsolete)

From Middle English norice, from Old French norrice, from Latin nūtrīcius (“that nourishes”), from nūtrīx (“wet nurse”), from nūtriō (“to suckle”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /nɜːs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /nɝs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s

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

   • 1990, House of Cards, Season 1, Episode 4:

     Francis Urquhart: Right. Mackenzie. Health. No chance of getting him into a demo at a hospital, I suppose?
     Tim Stamper: Doesn't go to hospitals any more. Kept getting beaten up by the nurses... I think he has trouble getting insured now.

4. (figuratively) 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".

   • Burke

     the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise

5. (horticulture) A shrub or tree that protects a young plant.
6. (nautical) A lieutenant or first officer who takes command when the captain is unfit for his place.
7. A larva of certain trematodes, which produces cercariae by asexual reproduction.
8. A nurse shark.

• Some speakers consider nurses (medical workers) to be female by default, and thus use "male nurse" to refer to a man doing the same job.

• nurse practitioner
• wet nurse, wet-nurse

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

1. to breastfeed

   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 manage with care and economy

   Synonym: husband

5. to drink slowly
6. to foster, to nourish
7. to hold closely to one's chest

   Would you like to nurse the puppy?

8. to strike (billiard balls) gently, so as to keep them in good position during a series of shots
   • 1866, United States. Congress. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Supplemental report of the Joint Committee

     It is to our interest to let Lee and Johnston come together, just as a billiard-player would nurse the balls when he has them in a nice place.

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.

• (drink slowly): sip, see also Thesaurus:drink

• matron
• sister

• nurse in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• nurse in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• nurse at OneLook Dictionary Search
• Nurse in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• Nuers, Suren, Unser, runes, urnes

nurse

1. Alternative form of norice