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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



... almost any work welcome. If it is done from love or unselfish affection, the human cost is almost nil, because it is not counted or consciously felt. This is no exaggeration when it is applied to the devoted labour of the mother and the nurse, or to that of the evangelist conscious of a divine vocation. But in all useful work the keen desire to render social service, or to do God's will, diminishes to an incalculable extent the 'human cost' of labour. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... insignificant-looking young lady, but none the less a lady who wore her clothes a la St. Petersburg, and cultivated the society of persons who were unimpeachably comme il faut. Behind her, borne in a nurse's arms, came the first fruits of the love of husband and wife. Adopting his most telling method of approach (the method accompanied with a sidelong inclination of the head and a sort of hop), Chichikov hastened to greet the lady from the metropolis, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden clinch; Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be warm; Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't a cinch Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Here's the Sewer's exposure of the Wall Street Gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the Washington Gang, and the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at a great expense, by his own nurse. Here's the Sewer! Here's the New York Sewer, in its twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their names printed! Here's the Sewer's article upon the Judge that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to lament for that thou canst not helpe, And study helpe for that which thou lament'st, Time is the Nurse, and breeder of all good; Here, if thou stay, thou canst not see thy loue: Besides, thy staying will abridge thy life: Hope is a louers staffe, walke hence with that And manage it, against despairing thoughts: Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence, Which, being writ ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare


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