accouche

present singular third person accouches · participle present accouching · participle past accouched · past accouched

1. datedtransitiveTo aid in an accouchement; to assist (a mother) in the birth (of a child).

   If a woman be accouched or die in the house of her parents, the parents are unclean for three days, and the brother for one.

   1815, Richard Hey, Some Principles of Civilization, page 252

   2 more examples

   Every one recognises in the process of generation a certain amount of hereditariness […] nor (except in the Arabian Nights) do royal husbands believe that their princesses can be accouched of logs of wood.

   1850, John Simon, General Pathology, page 169

   Mothers are admitted to the Home prior to confinement, are accouched in the Maternity Ward of the Andressey Hospital, and are then re-admitted with their infants after confinement to the Girls’ Home.

   1952, Robert Mitchell, Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health, County Borough of Burton upon Trent, page 7

2. ambitransitivedatedTo give birth (to a child); (figuratively) to bring into the world.

   that immortalized yet unborn Thane of Fife who, invulnerable to normally accouched swordsmen, laid on and slew Macbeth

   1930, George Bernard Shaw, Immaturity, page x

   2 more examples

   After the elaboration of a fact, the most magnificent in all its proportions and most complete in all its details; after accouching a monster such as the world never saw equalled in extent, a leviathan of a lie […]

   1827 June, “Sir Jonah Barrington’s Personal Sketches of His Own Times”, in The London Magazine, volume 8, page 242

   The Sumu woman […] accouches in a corner of the hut, which has been screened off either with bark cloth or with thatch.

   1932, Eduard Conzemius, Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua, page 150