accouche
verb/əˈkuːʃ/ · /əˈkaʊ̯t͡ʃ/
Etymology A back-formation from accouchement, or else from French accoucher.
1
Dated To 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:
- 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:
1 more example
- 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
Ambitransitive, Dated To give birth (to a child); (figuratively) to bring into the world.
- 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:
- that immortalized yet unborn Thane of Fife who, invulnerable to normally accouched swordsmen, laid on and slew Macbeth1930, George Bernard Shaw, Immaturity, page x:
1 more example
- 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: