Word.ws English Dictionary

still-born

still-born is the alternative spelling of stillborn.

Meaning of stillborn

Adjective

stillborn (not comparable)

  1. Dead at birth.
    • Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son.1768, Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III
    Synonyms:
    deadborn
    Antonyms:
    quickborn
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Ignored, without influence, or unsuccessful from the outset; abortive.
    • This, gentlemen, is a list of the joint-stock companies created last year. . . . Of these some were stillborn, but the majority hold the market.1859, Charles Reade, chapter 11, in Love Me Little, Love Me Long
    Synonyms:
    unfruitful

See all 3 meanings of stillborn

Questions about still-born

What is still-born the alternative spelling of?
Still-born is the alternative spelling of stillborn.

Words near still-born in the dictionary

  1. Still's disease
  2. Still's murmur
  3. Still's murmurs
  4. still-birth
  5. still-births
  6. still-born
  7. still-green
  8. still-hunt
  9. still-hunted
  10. still-hunting
  11. still-hunts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: still-born (page history and authors); stillborn (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: “still-born.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/still-born. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.