nanny

plural nannies · alternative nannie

1. A child's nurse.

   The nanny was keeping a close watch on her little charges.

   1 more example

   Nanny Broome was looking up at the outer wall. Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime. Their bases were on a level with the pavement outside, a narrow way which was several feet lower than the road behind the house.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 14, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   Synonyms: housemother

2. colloquialA grandmother.
3. UScolloquialA godmother.
4. A female goat.

   Nannies and billies look very similar, both having dangerously sharp, curved black horns.

   2005, Richard Cannings, The Rockies: A Natural History, Greystone Books, published 2005, →ISBN, page 103

   2 more examples

   Breeding is a consuming goal, and the ascendance of the sex drive is nearly as apparent in the behavior of a mountain goat billy. So given over is he to following and defending a succession of nannies as he searches for one in heat (estrus), he loses interest in food altogether; […]

   1983, Douglas H. Chadwick, A Beast the Color of Winter: The Mountain Goat Observed, Bison Books, published 2002, →ISBN, page 159

   A farmer friend keeps a video camera in the barn so she can turn on her goat cam and observe her animals at any time of the day or night. A baby monitor picks up the sounds of a nanny when she goes into labor—if the nanny is one who changes the usual pitch of her voice or nervously bleats during kidding.

   2013, Janet Hurst, The Whole Goat Handbook: Recipes, Cheese, Soap, Crafts & More, Voyageur Press, published 2013, →ISBN, page 28

   Synonyms: nanny goat

5. businessSynonym of sylvester (“device for pulling out pit props”).

   Synonyms: sylvester

present singular third person nannies · participle present nannying · participle past nannied · past nannied

1. intransitivetransitiveTo serve as a nanny.
2. derogatorytransitiveTo treat like a nanny's charges; to coddle.First known use mid-20th c.

   In real life, says a Democratic campaign aide, members of Congress are too nannied by staff to stride about hatching plots, one-on-one.

   2013 February 21, “Unreality television”, in The Economist

   1 more example

   All politicians seem worried. After 40-plus years of being nannied by the EU they are now faced with having to stand on their own two feet.

   2016 June 24, Angie Willems, “'A drastic change was necessary' - Coventry reacts to Brexit vote”, in Coventry Telegraph

1. A diminutive of the female given names Ann and Anne.