Word.ws English Dictionary

en caul

en caul adjective: of a birth: with the baby still inside an intact amniotic sac.

en caul: of a birth: with the baby still inside an intact amniotic sac
Image: JC Brand, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

en caul (not comparable)

  1. Of a birth: with the baby still inside an intact amniotic sac.
    • en caul birth
    • Trauma to the newborn may be minimized by en caul delivery.2007, Ashley S. Roman, Martin L. Pernoll, “Late Pregnancy Complications”, in Alan H. DeCherney, Lauren Nathan, T. Murphy Goodwin, Neri Laufer, Current Diagnosis & Treatment Obstetrics & Gynecology...

Adverb

en caul (not comparable)

  1. Of a birth: with the baby still inside an intact amniotic sac.
    • born en caul
    • The membrane from the water sac was still covering her body; she was born en caul.2003, Catherine Amador-Locher, “In Her Own Time”, in Sheri L. Menelli, Journey into Motherhood: Inspirational Stories of Natural Birth, Carlsbad, Calif.: White Heart Publishing, published 2005...

Examples of en caul in a sentence

  • En caul births were rare, and I’d only ever seen pictures in clinical books.2016, Jennifer Manuel, chapter 1, in The Heaviness of Things That Float, Madeira Park, B.C.: Douglas & McIntyre, →ISBN, page 15:
  • Due to the rarity and strange appearance of the sac, legends have built up over the centuries, the most common being that a baby born en caul will never drown.2011, Melissa Coleman, “Water”, in This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone, New York, N.Y.: Harper, →ISBN...
  • She told me once that she was born en caul, which meant when she came into this world, she was still hangin’ out inside the amniotic sac.2015, L[aurie] K[ellogg] McCall, “Tobias”, in Sway of the Siren, May River Press, LLC, →ISBN, page 51:
  • For example, African tradition believed that children born en caul (fully enclosed in the amniotic sac) were gifted with second sight into the spiritual world.2021, Kimberly C. Harper, “Black Midwives and Reclaiming Choice”, in The Ethos of Black Motherhood in America: Only White Women Get...

Forms of en caul

alternative formen-caul

Questions about en caul

What does en caul mean?
En caul means of a birth: with the baby still inside an intact amniotic sac.
How do you use en caul in a sentence?
En caul births were rare, and I’d only ever seen pictures in clinical books.
What part of speech is en caul?
En caul can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near en caul in the dictionary

  1. en bloc clip
  2. en bloc clips
  3. en brochette
  4. en brosse
  5. en cabochon
  6. en caul
  7. en clair
  8. en coup de sabre
  9. en creux
  10. en croix
  11. en dash

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: en caul (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.

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Cite this entry: “en caul.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/en_caul. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.