Nursing

How to spell nursing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nursing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nursing mean?

1. nounThe profession or practice of caring for the sick, injured, or elderly.
2. verbCaring for, tending to, or breastfeeding (the present participle of 'nurse').

Nursing in a sentence

• noun

  She left her office job to study nursing at the local college.

• verb

  She was nursing her newborn quietly in the corner of the waiting room.

• noun

  The hospital is facing a serious shortage of nursing staff this winter.

• verb

  He spent the weekend nursing a heavy cold and a sore throat.

Where does nursing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows out of the verb 'nurse', which English took from Old French in the 1400s in the form 'norice' or 'nurice', a word for a woman who suckles and rears a child. That French term descended from the Late Latin 'nutricia', meaning a wet-nurse, which in turn rests on the Latin verb 'nutrire', literally 'to nourish' or 'to suckle'. The same Latin root feeds our modern words 'nutrition' and 'nourish', so the underlying idea has always been one of feeding and tending. By adding the suffix '-ing', English produced a noun for the activity of caring for the sick, a usage that became firmly attached to the medical profession during the 1800s as hospital training was formalised. The familiar 'ur' spelling reflects the shift from the older 'nour-' vowel, which is why the trickiest part is simply remembering the single 's' rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• nurse (from Latin nutrire: to nourish, suckle)
• -ing (forming a noun or present participle)