Newborn

How to spell newborn

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce newborn

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does newborn mean?

1. adjectiveRecently or only just born.

Newborn in a sentence

• The newborn lamb struggled to stand on the cold grass.

• Hospitals keep newborn babies under careful observation for the first day.

Where does newborn come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Newborn is a transparent compound of two very old native English words. The first element, 'new', descends from Old English 'niwe', meaning recently made or fresh, a word with cousins right across the Germanic languages. The second, 'born', is the past participle of the verb 'bear', from Old English 'beran', which meant to carry and, in the sense of carrying a child to term, to give birth. The two were joined to describe a child only just delivered, and the compound has been recorded in English since the medieval period. Because both halves are plain everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises beyond remembering it is written as a single closed word rather than 'new born'.

How the word is built

• new (recently come into being)
• born (past participle of bear, to give birth)