unchild
verbEtymology From un- + child.
1
Obsolete To make (someone) childless.
- Though in this city he / Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, / Which to this hour bewail the injury, / Yet he shall have a noble memory.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene vi]:
- No appetite, that like the unchilded sea / […] hungers for such orts / As riot spares lean want, is yet so wide, / So vast of ravin or so blind in scope, / As can abide the chewed and perished meats / That relish died upon.1860, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Rosamond. A Play.”, in The Queen-mother. Rosamond. Two Plays, London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], →OCLC, Act IV, page 201:
- Related terms
- unchilding