Nurses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Healthcare practitioners who deliver essential medical care and emotional support to patients in various settings
2. Trained professionals who aid in the treatment and well-being of individuals, ensuring health oversight and compassionate assistance
3. Women who are licensed medical professionals providing patient care in health facilities ; women who take care of babies or young children, often by feeding and comforting them

Etymology: "Nurses" is the plural of "nurse," and the noun's central sense began as a nursing mother rather than a hospital professional. The Latin "nūtrīx" meant a wet nurse, a woman who suckled another's child, and it descended from "nūtriō," "to suckle." Through Late Latin "nūtrīcia" and Old French "norrice," the word reached Middle English as "norice," which still meant someone hired to feed and raise children. The modern sense of a trained caregiver for the sick came later and grew from the same idea: tending and nourishing a person who cannot look after themselves. The English form changed notably in the 1500s, when the spelling "nusse" or "nuse" appeared. Its exact origin there is uncertain, though one suggestion is that "an huss" was misdivided as "a nuss," with "huss" a word otherwise unclear to us. The change from "norice" to "nurse" is therefore less a clean evolution than a reshaping that left the word's original sense of feeding intact.

Synonyms: caregivers, healthcare providers, nurturers, attendants, aides