dry nurse
dry nurse noun: a nurse who takes care of a baby, but does not breastfeed.
Noun
dry nurse (plural dry nurses)
- A nurse who takes care of a baby, but does not breastfeed.
- The family found a dry nurse to take care of the infant.
- An inferior officer who carries on the duty on board ship, due to the captain's ignorance of seamanship.
Verb
dry nurse (third-person singular simple present dry nurses, present participle dry nursing, simple past and past participle dry nursed)
- To feed, attend, and bring up without suckling.
- Of an inferior officer: to carry on the duty on board ship, due to the captain's ignorance of seamanship.
Forms of dry nurse
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | dry nurses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dry nurses |
| present participle | dry nursing |
| past participle | dry nursed |
| past | dry nursed |
Origin of dry nurse
To distinguish from a wet nurse, who suckles a baby.
Questions about dry nurse
- What does dry nurse mean?
- Dry nurse means a nurse who takes care of a baby, but does not breastfeed.
- What part of speech is dry nurse?
- Dry nurse can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of dry nurse?
- The plural of dry nurse is dry nurses.
Words near dry nurse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dry nurse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “dry nurse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dry_nurse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.