NURSINGS
Noun
nursings
plural of nursing
Source: Wiktionary
NURSING
Nurs"ing, a.
Definition: Supplying or taking nourishment from, or as from, the breast;
as, a nursing mother; a nursing infant.
NURSE
Nurse, n. Etym: [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.]
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. Burke.
3. (Naut.)
Definition: A lieutenant or first officer, who is the real commander when
the captain is unfit for his place.
4. (Zoƶl.)
(a) A peculiar larva of certain trematodes which produces cercariƦ by
asexual reproduction. See Cercaria, and Redia.
(b) Either one of the nurse sharks. Nurse shark. (Zoƶl.) (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.
Nurse, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Nursed; p. pr. & vb. n. 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. Milton.
Him in Egerian groves Aricia bore, And nursed his youth along the
marshy shore. Dryden.
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." Milton.
By what hands [has vice] been nursed into so uncontrolled a dominion
Locke.
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. A. Trollope. To nurse
billiard balls, to strike them gently and so as to keep them in good
position during a series of caroms.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition