birth

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The horror of a child growing up and living with the knowledge that his or her birth was the occasion of his or her mother's execution is hard to imagine.

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Definitions (27)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (10)

  1. noun The emergence and separation of offspring from the body of the mother.
  2. noun The act or process of bearing young; parturition: the mare's second birth.
  3. noun The circumstances or conditions relating to this event, as its time or location: an incident that took place before my birth; a Bostonian by birth.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (9)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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This word has been looked up 154 times.

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

marriage ·  education ·  age ·  wealth ·  origin ·  virtue ·  beauty ·  character ·  death ·  existence ·  race ·  creation

Used in the same contextWord Family

birth:   births
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, probably of Scandinavian origin; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English also berth, from Middle English birth, berth, byrth, birthe, burthe, byrthe (apparently assimilated to Icelandic *byrdhr, later burdhr = Old Swedish byrth, Swedish börd = Danish byrd), reg. Middle English byrde, burde, from Anglo-Saxon gebyrd (= OFries. berd, berth = Old Saxon giburd = Dutch geboorte = Old High German giburt, Middle High German G. geburt = Gothic (Moesogothic) gabaurths, birth, nativity; cf. Irish brith = Gaelic bréith, birth; Sanskrit bhriti), with formative -d (and prefix ge-), from beran, bear: see bear.
 

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/bərθ/
by American Heritage

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