 7 definitions found
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
birth
noun
1: the time when something begins (especially life); "they
divorced after the birth of the child"; "his election
signaled the birth of a new age" [ant: {death}]
2: the event of being born; "they celebrated the birth of their
first child" [syn: {nativity}, {nascency}, {nascence}]
[ant: {death}]
3: the process of giving birth [syn: {parturition}, {giving
birth}, {birthing}]
4: the kinship relation of an offspring to the parents [syn: {parentage}]
verb: give birth (to a newborn); "My wife had twins yesterday!"
[syn: {give birth}, {deliver}, {bear}, {have}]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Berth \Berth\ (b[~e]rth), noun [From the root of bear to produce,
like birth nativity. See {Birth}.] [Also written {birth}.]
1. (Naut.)
(a) Convenient sea room.
(b) A room in which a number of the officers or ship's
company mess and reside.
(c) The place where a ship lies when she is at anchor, or
at a wharf.
2. An allotted place; an appointment; situation or
employment. ''He has a good berth.'' --Totten.
3. A place in a ship to sleep in; a long box or shelf on the
side of a cabin or stateroom, or of a railway car, for
sleeping in.
{Berth deck}, the deck next below the lower gun deck. --Ham.
Nav. Encyc.
{To give} (the land or any object) {a wide berth}, to keep at
a distance from it.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Birth \Birth\ (b[~e]rth), noun [OE. burth, birth, AS. beor[eth],
gebyrd, fr. beran to bear, bring forth; akin to D. geboorte,
OHG. burt, giburt, G. geburt, Icel. bur[eth]r, Skr. bhrti
bearing, supporting; cf. Ir. & Gael. beirthe born, brought
forth. [root]92. See 1st {Bear}, and cf. {Berth}.]
1. The act or fact of coming into life, or of being born; --
generally applied to human beings; as, the birth of a son.
2. Lineage; extraction; descent; sometimes, high birth; noble
extraction.
Elected without reference to birth, but solely for
qualifications. --Prescott.
3. The condition to which a person is born; natural state or
position; inherited disposition or tendency.
A foe by birth to Troy's unhappy name. --Dryden.
4. The act of bringing forth; as, she had two children at a
birth. ''At her next birth.'' --Milton.
5. That which is born; that which is produced, whether animal
or vegetable.
Poets are far rarer births than kings. --B. Jonson.
Others hatch their eggs and tend the birth till it
is able to shift for itself. --Addison.
6. Origin; beginning; as, the birth of an empire.
{New birth} (Theol.), regeneration, or the commencement of a
religious life.
Syn: Parentage; extraction; lineage; race; family.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Birth \Birth\, noun
See {Berth}. [Obs.] --De Foe.
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
187 Moby Thesaurus words for "birth":
Altmann theory, DNA, De Vries theory, Galtonian theory,
Mendelianism, Mendelism, RNA, Verworn theory, Weismann theory,
Weismannism, Wiesner theory, abiogenesis, abortion, accouchement,
affiliation, allele, allelomorph, ancestry, animal spirits,
animate existence, animation, apparentation, archigenesis,
aristocracy, aristocraticalness, babyhood, bear, bearing, beget,
beginning, beginnings, being alive, biogenesis, birth throes,
birthing, blastogenesis, blessed event, blood, bloodline,
blue blood, branch, breed, bring to birth, character, childbearing,
childbed, childbirth, childhood, chromatid, chromatin, chromosome,
commencement, common ancestry, confinement, consanguinity, cradle,
creation, dawn, dawning, delivery, derivation, descent,
determinant, determiner, development, diathesis, digenesis,
direct line, distaff side, distinction, emergence, endowment,
engender, epigenesis, eugenics, eumerogenesis, existence,
extraction, factor, family, father, female line, filiation,
freshman year, gene, generation, genesiology, genesis,
genetic code, genetics, genteelness, gentility, give birth to,
giving birth, hatching, having a baby, having life, hereditability,
heredity, heritability, heritage, heterogenesis, histogenesis,
homogenesis, honorable descent, house, immortality,
inborn capacity, inception, inchoation, incipience, incipiency,
incunabula, infancy, inheritability, inheritance, isogenesis,
labor, life, lifetime, line, line of descent, lineage, liveliness,
living, long life, longevity, male line, matrocliny, merogenesis,
metagenesis, miscarriage, monogenesis, mother, multiparity,
nascence, nascency, nativity, nobility, noble birth, nobleness,
onset, opening, origin, origination, orthogenesis, outset,
outstart, pangenesis, parentage, parthenogenesis, parturition,
patrocliny, pharmacogenetics, phylum, pregnancy, procreate,
procreation, quality, race, rank, recessive character, replication,
royalty, seed, sept, side, sire, slip, spear side, spindle side,
spontaneous generation, spriteliness, start, stem, stirps, stock,
strain, succession, sword side, the Nativity, the stork, travail,
viability, vitality, vivacity, youth
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
BIRTH, noun The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of
it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born
from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block
of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he
grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It
is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a
stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount
Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:
Birth
As soon as a child was born it was washed, and rubbed with salt
(Ezek. 16:4), and then swathed with bandages (Job 38:9; Luke
2:7, 12). A Hebrew mother remained forty days in seclusion after
the birth of a son, and after the birth of a daughter double
that number of days. At the close of that period she entered
into the tabernacle or temple and offered up a sacrifice of
purification (Lev. 12:1-8; Luke 2:22). A son was circumcised on
the eighth day after his birth, being thereby consecrated to God
(Gen. 17:10-12; comp. Rom. 4:11). Seasons of misfortune are
likened to the pains of a woman in travail, and seasons of
prosperity to the joy that succeeds child-birth (Isa. 13:8; Jer.
4:31; John 16:21, 22). The natural birth is referred to as the
emblem of the new birth (John 3:3-8; Gal. 6:15; Titus 3:5,
etc.).
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