stillborn
/ˈstɪlbɔː(ɹ)n/
stillborn adjective: dead at birth.
Adjective
stillborn (not comparable)
- 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
- Or why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?1978, Holy Bible (New International Version), Job 3:16
- 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
- His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song, but the sound died stillborn.1915, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 18, in The Highgrader
- Synonyms:
- unfruitful
Noun
stillborn (plural stillborns)
- A baby that is born dead.
- About 35% of stillborns are discovered to have major structural anomalies by chromosomal studies and autopsy findings.2016, Alok Sharma, A Practical Guide to Third Trimester of Pregnancy & Puerperium
stillborn meaning in Tamil, Tagalog, Arabic and Indonesian
stillborn in Tamil
- இறந்த குட்டி ஈனுதல், செத்துப் பிறந்த, சாபிறவி
stillborn in Tagalog
- dead at birth
- lungal
stillborn in Arabic
- dead at birth
- إِمْلَاص ʔimlāṣ
stillborn in Indonesian
- stillborn
- bayi lahir mati
Synonyms of stillborn
Antonyms
Forms of stillborn
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | still-born |
| Noun | |
| plural | stillborns |
Origin of stillborn
From English still + born. First attested in 1597.
Questions about stillborn
- What does stillborn mean?
- Stillborn means dead at birth.
- What is stillborn in Tamil?
- Stillborn in Tamil is இறந்த குட்டி ஈனுதல், செத்துப் பிறந்த, சாபிறவி. See Stillborn meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is stillborn?
- Stillborn can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce stillborn?
- Stillborn is pronounced /ˈstɪlbɔː(ɹ)n/.
Words near stillborn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stillborn (page history and authors); stillborn (Tamil Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stillborn.wav.
Cite this entry: “stillborn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stillborn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.