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Home > Phrases & Sayings > Why are they called midwives? Why are they called midwives?

flobadob | 12:36 Mon 14th Feb 2011 | Phrases & Sayings 4 Answers

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Why are people who help deliver babies called midwives? prev

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B00 It comes from Middle English: mid = "with" and Old English: wif = "woman". 12:37 Mon 14th Feb 2011 Avatar Image

NazNomad The word midwife is the sort of word whose etymology seems perfectly clear until one tries to figure it out. Wife would seem to refer to the woman giving birth, who is usually a wife, but mid ? A knowledge of older senses of words helps us with this puzzle. Wife in its earlier history meant "woman," as it still did when the compound midwife was formed in Middle English (first recorded around 1300). Mid is probably a preposition, meaning "together with." Thus a midwife was literally a "with woman" or "a woman who assists other women in childbirth." Even though obstetrics has been rather resistant to midwifery until fairly recently, the etymology of obstetric is rather similar, going back to the Latin word obstetrx, "a midwife," from the verb obstre, "to stand in front of," and the feminine suffix -trx; the obstetrx would thus literally stand in front of the baby. 12:37 Mon 14th Feb 2011

heathfield Many of our words in English derive from the Teutonic languages. Hence I suspect that the Middle English 'mid' meaning 'with' has much to do with the German word 'mit' meaning the same thing. Strangely enough, none of the etymological sources I've looked at seem to have made this connection. 15:25 Mon 14th Feb 2011 Avatar Image

beso It's obvious. They deal with that bump in the middle of the wife. 10:21 Thu 17th Feb 2011

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