Midwife
nounA trained health professional who assists women during pregnancy, labour, and birth.
How to spell midwife
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce midwife
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does midwife mean?
- nounA trained health professional who assists women during pregnancy, labour, and birth.
Midwife in a sentence
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The midwife monitored the baby's heartbeat throughout the labour.
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After the home birth, the midwife visited daily to check on the newborn.
Where does midwife come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a thoroughly native English word, assembled in the Middle English period from two Old English elements. The first part is 'mid', an old preposition meaning 'with' or 'alongside', the same word that survives in German as 'mit'; it is not the modern 'mid' meaning 'middle', though the spellings collided long ago. The second part is 'wif', the Old English word for a woman, which only later narrowed to mean specifically a married woman, our modern 'wife'. Put together, a midwife is literally a 'with-woman', that is, the woman who is with the mother during childbirth. The word has nothing to do with being halfway through anything, and remembering that the 'wife' ending is simply the ordinary word 'wife' is the easiest way to keep the spelling straight.
How the word is built
- mid- (Old English mid: with, alongside)
- wife (Old English wif: woman)
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