nurse

SayNURS/nɝs//nɜːs/

17 meanings of nurse

1
nouncountable
A person who is involved in caring directly for people who are sick.
The nurse on the night shift checked on every patient in the ward twice an hour.
When her father fell ill, she became his nurse, bathing and feeding him at home for months.
Similarcarer, caregiver
Note
This is the umbrella meaning, broad enough to hold both the trained medical worker and anyone who takes on the work. Its roots lie in feeding rather than medicine: Middle English norice goes back through Old French norrice and Late Latin nūtrīcia to Latin nūtrīx, "wet nurse", from nūtriō, "to suckle". Context does the sorting: she became his nurse names a role taken on at home, while the nurse on the night shift names a job.
2
verbtransitive
To care for someone, especially during illness, attending to their needs as they recover.
The family nursed their grandmother through her long illness.
Aid workers nurse patients in regions with few doctors.
Similartend
Oppositeneglect
Note
The phrase this sense lives in is nurse someone back to health. The back marks a return, and health or strength completes the phrase. Without that frame the verb still implies sustained, hands-on attention over time rather than a single visit. That is why it pairs so naturally with through, as in nursed her through the illness.
3
verbtransitive
To feed a baby with milk directly from the breast; to suckle.
She nursed the infant while rocking gently in the chair.
Some mammals nurse their young for many months.
Similarbreastfeed, suckle
Note
Here the one giving milk is the subject and the baby is the object: she nurses her son. The verb keeps the Latin nūtriō, "to suckle," which also lies behind the archaic "wet nurse" noun. Turn it around, with the infant as subject and no object, and you get the baby's side of feeding: the baby nurses.
4
nouncountable
A person, usually a woman, employed to care for other people's children.
The family hired a nurse to look after their three young children.
Each morning the nurse dressed the children and prepared their breakfast.
Similarnanny, nursemaid
5
verbcolloquialtransitive
To drink a beverage slowly in order to make it last.
She nursed her wine, savoring each small sip.
Regulars nurse their pints long after the conversation has died down.
Similarsip
Oppositegulp, guzzle
6
verbfigurativelytransitive
To dwell on and keep alive an emotion, usually a negative one, in one's mind; to brood over it.
She nursed a quiet bitterness toward the colleague who had betrayed her.
He tends to nurse every slight until it grows into outright hostility.
Similarharbor, feed
Note
The stock phrase is nurse a grudge, and the object is nearly always a feeling better not kept, such as resentment, bitterness or anxiety. Stephen Buranyi wrote in 2020 of "nursing ever greater anxiety about the state of the world." Harbor and feed take the same direct object. Dwell on needs its preposition: you nurse a grudge, but you dwell on one.
7
verbtransitive
To tend something gently and with extra care, protecting it as it grows or recovers.
He nursed the injured sapling back to vigor over the summer.
Conservationists nurse rare orchids in carefully controlled greenhouses.
Similarnurture, tend, cultivate
Oppositeneglect
8
verbtransitive
To hold someone or something closely and protectively against one's chest.
She nursed the wounded bird gently against her chest as she walked.
Mourners nurse framed photographs to their chests at the memorial.
Similarcradle, clutch, hug
9
verbtransitive
To run or watch over something with careful attention, spending or using resources sparingly.
The new director nursed the failing department back to financial health.
Careful owners nurse their resources through every downturn.
Similarhusband
Oppositemismanage, squander
Note
Money and resources are its natural objects: one nurses a budget or a failing business. Its closest synonym is husband, and the two share the idea of spending sparingly. Nurse adds a note of protection, as if the thing being managed were fragile and needed time to recover.
10
verbintransitive
To feed at the breast, as an infant does.
The infant nursed every two hours through the night.
Lambs nurse instinctively within minutes of being born.
Similarfeed, suckle

11
nounfigurativelycountable
A person or thing that brings up, rears, trains, or fosters growth.
The university long served as a nurse of radical ideas.
War, some claim, has been a harsh nurse of invention.
Similarcradle
Note
The figurative noun names a cause by what it raises, and it nearly always takes of. Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) speaks of "the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," and Eton has been called "the chief nurse of England's statesmen." The subject is usually an institution or a condition, and the phrase after of names what grows under its care.
12
nounarchaic
A woman who breastfeeds another's child in place of the mother.
The royal infant was placed with a nurse soon after birth.
Each nurse cared for two or three children at once in the foundling home.
Note
The oldest job the word names. Latin nūtrīx, behind the whole family, meant "wet nurse," and its verb nūtriō meant "to suckle." In older writing a bare nurse can mean exactly this: a woman feeding another's child. The sense is now archaic, so write wet nurse in full. A modern reader who sees nurse alone will picture a hospital.
13
nouncountable
A shrub or tree that shelters and protects a young plant while it establishes.
Pioneer shrubs often serve as a nurse for slower-growing forest trees.
The thorny hedge became a natural nurse for the oak seedlings it sheltered.
Note
Gardeners and foresters give the word a job description. A nurse is a hardy shrub or quick-growing tree that shades and shelters a slower plant while it establishes. Once the young plant can stand alone, the nurse is often cleared away or simply outgrown. The image is the children's nurse moved outdoors: care given for a season, then no longer needed.
14
nouncountable
A slow, bottom-dwelling shark of warm seas; the name is also applied to certain dogfish.
Anglers off the coast sometimes catch a nurse while fishing for grouper.
A large nurse lay motionless in the sandy shallows.
Note
A separate word that only looks like the others: it does not come from the Latin behind the caregiving nurse. Its origin is uncertain, and sixteenth-century spellings were nusse and nuse. One suggestion traces it to huss: "an huss" was heard as "a nuss," so the n slipped across the word boundary and stayed.
15
verb
To strike billiard balls gently so as to keep them well positioned for a series of shots.
16
noun
A larval stage of certain flukes that produces cercariae asexually inside a host.
17
noun
A lieutenant or first officer who assumes command when the captain is unable to serve.

Practice

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Origins

Meanings 1–13

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

Meaning 14

Uncertain in origin; an earlier 16th-century form was nusse or nuse. It may come from huss, through the reanalysis of "an huss" as "a nuss."