Noun: birth
| Singular | birth |
| Plural | births |
Sample Sentences
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Intersex babies account for roughly one per cent of all births.
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In Greece a child was given its name on the seventh or tenth day after birth. [1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page xiii:]
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the birth of an empire
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He was of noble birth, but fortune had not favored him.
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without reference to birth, but solely for their qualifications [1843, William H. Prescott, History Of The Conquest Of Mexico And History Of The Conquest Of Peru, The Modern Library, page 42:]
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Lucy […] had no fortune, which, though a minor evil, was an evil; and she had no birth, in the high-life sense of the word, which was a greater evil. [1861, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage:]
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That poets are far rarer births than kings. [1692, Ben Jonson, “Epigrams”, in The Works of Ben Jonson, page 288:]
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Others hatch their eggs and tend the birth till it is able to shift for itself. [1761, Joseph Addison, The Works of Joseph Addison, volume 3, John Baskerville, page 49:]
Nouns inflected like birth
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-
3. Proto-Indo-European *-tis
4. Proto-Indo-European *bʰértisder.
5. Proto-Germanic *burþiz
6. Old Norse burðrbor.
7. Middle English birthe
8. English birth
9. From Middle English birthe (1250), from earlier burthe, burde, from Old Norse burðr, byrd (Old Swedish byrth, Swedish börd), replacing Old English ġebyrd (rare variant byrþ), equivalent to bear + -th (thus a piecewise doublet of berth). The Old Norse is from Proto-Germanic *burdiz (compare Old Frisian berde, berd); Old English ġebyrd is from prefixed *gaburþiz (compare Dutch geboorte, German Geburt), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰŕ̥tis (compare Latin fors (“luck”), Old Irish brith), from *bʰer- (“to carry, bear”). More at bear. See: Middle English Nouns '
birthe', Old Norse Nouns '
burðr', Swedish Nouns '
börd', Dutch Nouns '
geboorte', German Nouns '
Geburt', Latin Nouns '
fors'.
Verbs referencing "birth"
Danish Nouns
byrd.