nurse

nurse is a Noun

Definition:

[1] One who nourishes; a person who supplies food, tends, or brings up; as: (a) A woman who has the care of young children; especially, one who suckles an infant not her own. (b) A person, especially a woman, who has the care of the sick or infirm.

[2] One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, fosters, or the like. The nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise. Burke.

[3] A lieutenant or first officer, who is the real commander when the captain is unfit for his place.

[4] A peculiar larva of certain trematodes which produces cercariæ by asexual reproduction. See Cercaria, and Redia.

[5] Either one of the nurse sharks. Nurse shark. (Zoöl.) (a) A large arctic shark (Somniosus microcephalus), having small teeth and feeble jaws; -- called also sleeper shark, and ground shark. (b) A large shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum), native of the West Indies and Gulf of Mexico, having the dorsal fins situated behind the ventral fins. -- To put to nurse, or To put out to nurse, to send away to be nursed; to place in the care of a nurse. -- Wet nurse, Dry nurse. See Wet nurse, and Dry nurse, in the Vocabulary.