birthing
noun
Simple meaning
The planking outside of a vessel, above the sheer strake.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
burthingSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbɝθɪŋ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The process of giving birth
often attributive
The act of giving birth.
nautical
The planking outside of a vessel, above the sheer strake.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The process of giving birth
Used this way, birthing is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The time when something begins (especially life).
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An assistant (often the father of the soon-to-be-born child) who provides support for a woman in labor by encouraging her to use techniques learned in childbirth-preparation classes.
A method of childbirth that avoids intrusive high-tech medicine in favor of more natural and homely settings.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- childbirthnoun
- newbornnoun
- litternoun
- neonataladjective
- postpartumadjective
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: giving birth
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.