gestation period
3
3.7
- noun
- /ˌdʒɛsˈteɪʃən ˈpɪərɪəd/
- Specialized
:
período de gestación
- Normal gestation period for the dog is approximately 63 days.
- reported gestation period
Best we can reckon, and what the Maya themselves today continue to say is that it's the gestation period of human it's nine months.
- Best we can reckon, and what the Maya themselves today continue to say is that it's the gestation period of human it's nine months.
- As a pro-life person, I can't limit my appreciation and commitment to life only as long as it's in the gestation period.
- You're the host and whether you've had C sections or not, the biology, the gestation period is defined biologically, not host wise.
Examples
-
And some high-risk premature births may be associated with fewer prenatal visits simply by virtue of their shorter gestation period.
Academic text (1991) -
"I did some research and learned that the gestation period for dogs is about nine weeks long."
Fiction book (1999) -
Look, their gestation period is only 6 hours
-
'The gestation period for a hippo is about 24 months.
-
Over the course of her fourteen-month gestation period, Bahati's behavior did not change markedly.
Academic text (1992) -
While some scholars are still searching for an astronomical basis for this cycle, most agree it was based on the human gestation period, which averages 260 days.
Academic text (2004) -
The gestation period for most mammals varies significantly, but it is typically several months long.
-
A dolphin's gestation period lasts around twelve months before the calf is born.
-
Understanding the gestation period of various animals helps in wildlife conservation efforts.
Synonyms
592
1.3
The time when a person carries a growing baby before birth
15
5.5
The time a baby grows inside the mother's womb from the start to birth
How Long
Surface Forms
Morphology
Both constituents are semantically aligned: 'gestation' denotes the development time of an embryo/fetus and 'period' denotes a measured interval, so the compound simply refers to that interval. This is a literal, compositional N+N construction (and has clear equivalents in many languages), so a learner who knows both words will readily understand the meaning.
Etymology
Gestation period comes from the idea of gestation meaning 'to carry' and period meaning 'time'. It gives the image of a mother carrying her baby for a set time, so the gestation period is the length of time the embryo develops inside the mother before birth.