dry nurse
- noun
- /draɪ nɜrs/
- Archaic
:
nodriza
- The family hired a dry nurse when the mother could not breastfeed.
Examples
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The dry nurse took care of the baby while the mother rested.
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In Victorian times, a dry nurse would care for children from wealthy families.
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A dry nurse provided daily care and comfort to the infant.
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Many families hire a dry nurse for extra help.
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In Victorian times, a dry nurse would care for children from wealthy families.
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A dry nurse provided daily care and comfort to the infant.
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The family hired a dry nurse when the mother could not breastfeed.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is partly compositional: 'nurse' can mean a caregiver or someone who breastfeeds, and 'dry' can be understood as 'not producing milk' so a learner could plausibly infer 'a nurse who does not breastfeed.' However, the specialized sense of 'dry' = 'not lactating' and the conventionalized role 'dry nurse' are register- and culture-specific and not fully predictable from the common meanings of the words, making the expression only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Dry nurse comes from the opposite of a 'wet nurse' who fed the baby. A dry nurse did the caring but did not give milk, so the phrase means 'a woman who cares for an infant without breastfeeding it'.