midwife

«midwife» in Mova's school dictionary: A trained nurse or health worker who helps women while… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a midwife, midwives)

meaning for a pupil

1) A trained nurse or health worker who helps women while they are pregnant, while they give birth and just afterwards. tree →

2) (figurative) A person who helps something new to come into being. tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life a midwife visits a pregnant mum, helps the baby be born and checks the new baby. In stories, especially in history, the village midwife delivered babies at home. Phrases: community midwife, the midwife delivered the baby.

examples

• The midwife helped my baby brother be born. tree →
• Mum saw the midwife every few weeks before the birth. tree →
• The midwife weighed the newborn baby. tree →
• My aunt is a midwife at the hospital. tree →
• In the old village, the midwife came to people's homes. tree →
• The midwife listened to the baby's heartbeat. tree →
• Men can be midwives too. tree →

note

Irregular plural: midwives (f to v), like wife/wives. «Mid-» here once meant «with», so midwife = «with the woman». Both men and women can be midwives.

In the corpora

• Midwives and doctors check on mum and baby all the way through.
• A midwife is a nurse trained to care for women and babies during pregnancy, birth and the first days after.
• Two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, refused Pharaoh's order to kill the baby boys.
• But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men-children alive.
• And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «midwife» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.