• norice, nourice, nourse (all obsolete)

• enPR: nûrs

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /nɜːs/
• (Standard Southern British) IPA^(key): /nɵːs/, /nəːs/ (weak vowel merger)
• (General American) IPA^(key): /nɝs/

• (Northumbria) IPA^(key): /nɔːs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s

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

nurse (plural nurses)

1. A person involved in providing direct care for the sick:
   1. (informal) Anyone performing this role, regardless of training or profession.

      My aunt was my nurse while I recuperated at home from surgery.

   2. A medical worker performing this role, typically someone trained to provide such care but having credentials and rank below a doctor or physician assistant.

      The nurse made her rounds through the hospital ward.

      • 1990, Andrew Davies, Michael Dobbs, 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.

   3. (healthcare) A medical worker, such as a registered nurse, having training, credentials, and rank above a nurse assistant.
2. A person (usually a woman) who takes care of other people’s children.

   They hired a nurse to care for their young boy.

3. (figurative) 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".

   • 1790 November, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event.[…], London: […] J[ames] Dodsley,[…], →OCLC:

     the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise

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

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

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

1. (transitive) To breastfeed: to feed (a baby) at the breast; to suckle.

   She believes that nursing her baby will make him strong and healthy.

2. (intransitive) To breastfeed: to be fed at the breast.
3. (transitive) To care for (someone), especially in sickness; to tend to.

   She nursed him back to health.

4. (transitive) To tend gently and with extra care.

   She nursed the rosebush and that season it bloomed.

5. (transitive) To manage or oversee (something) with care and economy.

   Synonym: husband

6. (transitive, informal) To drink (a beverage) slowly, so as to make it last.

   Rob was nursing a small beer.

7. (transitive, figuratively) To cultivate or persistently entertain (an attitude, usually negative) in one's mind; to brood or obsess over.

   Synonyms: dwell on, feed, harbor

   to nurse a grudge;   to nurse a grievance

   • 2020 April 10, Stephen Buranyi, “The WHO v coronavirus: why it can't handle the pandemic”, in The Guardian:

     If, like me, you have been confined to your home, glued to the news and nursing ever greater anxiety about the state of the world, you have probably become familiar with the sight of the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and his daily press briefings.

8. (transitive) To hold closely to one's chest.

   Would you like to nurse the puppy?

9. (transitive, billiards) 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 etymology 1, verb sense 6 "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, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “nurse”, in The Century Dictionary[…], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “nurse”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• 👁 Image
  Nurse in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Uncertain; earlier (16th century) nusse, nuse. Perhaps from huss, through metanalysis of "an huss" as "a nuss".

nurse (plural nurses)

1. A nurse shark or dogfish.

• grey nurse
• grey nurse shark
• nurse shark

• Nuers, Suren, Unser, runes, urnes

Borrowed from English nurse, itself derived from Old French norrice. Doublet of nourrice.

nurse f (plural nurses)

1. (dated) nanny

• → Romanian: nursă

• “nurse”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

nurse

1. alternative form of norice

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