Nurture

How to spell nurture

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nurture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nurture mean?

1. verbTo care for and encourage the growth or development of someone or something.
2. nounThe upbringing, care, and environmental influences that shape a person, as opposed to inherited traits.

Nurture in a sentence

• verb

  Good managers nurture the talent of their junior staff.

• noun

  The debate over nature versus nurture has occupied psychologists for decades.

• verb

  She works hard to nurture her children's curiosity about science.

• noun

  Their warm home provided the nurture that helped him thrive.

Where does nurture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Nurture entered English in the fourteenth century from Old French norriture or nourriture, meaning 'food, nourishment, or upbringing'. That word descended from the Late Latin nutritura, built on the Latin verb nutrire, which literally meant 'to suckle, feed, or nourish'. The earliest English sense was concrete and physical, referring to the food or sustenance that sustained a child, before it broadened to cover the whole process of rearing and training a young person. The same nutrire root feeds directly into the familiar relatives 'nourish', 'nutrition', and 'nurse', which explains why all of them carry that idea of feeding and tending. The spelling trap lies in the muffled middle: both vowels collapse to an 'ur' sound, so writers must remember the 't' and the closing '-ure' rather than spelling it as it sounds.

How the word is built

• nurtur- (from Latin nutrire: to nourish, feed)
• -e