Midwives

How to spell midwives

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce midwives

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does midwives mean?

1. nounTrained health professionals who care for women during pregnancy, labour, and the period after birth.

Midwives in a sentence

• The hospital employs several midwives on each maternity ward.

• Two community midwives visited her at home after the delivery.

Where does midwives come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word goes back to the Old English combination of 'mid', meaning 'with' or 'alongside', and 'wif', meaning 'woman' (the original sense of 'wife' before it narrowed to a married woman). A midwife was therefore literally the woman who is 'with' the mother during birth, a beautifully plain description of the role. The form appears in Middle English around the fourteenth century, and despite its sound it has nothing to do with the 'mid' of 'middle'. The plural follows the same rule as 'wife' to 'wives' and 'knife' to 'knives', where the final 'f' shifts to 'ves'. That spelling switch is the only real trap here: writers must remember it is 'midwives', not 'midwifes'. The old 'mid' meaning 'with' survives elsewhere too, as in the now archaic word 'midwifery'.

How the word is built

• mid (Old English: with, alongside)
• wives (plural of wife, in its old sense of 'woman')