womb

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womb

(wo͞om)

1. See uterus.

a. A place where something is generated.

b. An encompassing, protective hollow or space.

3. Obsolete The belly.

[Middle English, from Old English wamb.]

wombed adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

womb

(wuːm)

1. (Gynaecology & Obstetrics) the nontechnical name for uterus

2. a hollow space enclosing something, esp when dark, warm, or sheltering

3. a place where something is conceived: the Near East is the womb of western civilization.

4. (Anatomy) obsolete the belly

[Old English wamb; related to Old Norse vomb, Gothic wamba, Middle Low German wamme, Swedish våmm]

wombed adj

ˈwomblike adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

womb

(wum)

n.

1. uterus.

2. the place in which anything is formed or produced.

3. the interior of anything.

4. Obs. the belly.

[before 900; Old English, c. Old Frisian, Middle Low German wamme, Old High German, Gothic wamba, Old Norse vǫmb]

wombed, adj.

womb

(wo͞om)

See uterus.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

womb

gestation - Literally the period during which unborn young are "carried" inside the womb—from Latin gerere, "carry" or "conduct."
lightening - A drop in the level of the womb during the last weeks of pregnancy, as the head of the fetus engages in the pelvis.
matrix - From Latin, meaning "breeding female," it originally was used for the uterus or womb, then for a supporting or enclosing structure.
uterus - From the Latin word meaning "belly, womb."

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun

womb - a hollow muscular organ in the pelvic cavity of females; contains the developing fetus

uterus

cervix uteri, uterine cervix, cervix - necklike opening to the uterus

arteria uterina, uterine artery - a branch of the internal iliac artery that supplies the uterus and the upper part of the vagina

venter - the womb; "`in venter' is legal terminology for `conceived but not yet born'"

female reproductive system - the reproductive system of females

female internal reproductive organ - the reproductive organs of a woman

Fallopian tube, oviduct, uterine tube - either of a pair of tubes conducting the egg from the ovary to the uterus

uterine cavity - the space inside the uterus between the cervical canal and the Fallopian tubes

endometrium - (pregnancy) the mucous membrane that lines the uterus; thickens under hormonal control and (if pregnancy does not occur) is shed in menstruation; if pregnancy occurs it is shed along with the placenta at parturition

myometrium - the smooth muscle forming the wall of the uterus

placenta - the vascular structure in the uterus of most mammals providing oxygen and nutrients for and transferring wastes from the developing fetus

womb

noun

Related words
technical name uterus
adjective uterine

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

رحمرَحْم

děloha

livmor

Gebärmutter Schoß

μήτρα

utero

matriz útero

kehtokohtu

utérus ventre entrailles moule

leg

dzemde

maternica

womb

[wuːm] N → matriz f, útero m (fig) → cuna f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

womb

[ˈwuːm] n

(= uterus) → ventre m

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

womb

n → Mutterleib m, → Gebärmutter f (Med); (fig) → Schoß m; the foetus in the womb → der Embryo im Mutterleib; it’s just a yearning to return to the womb → das ist nur die Sehnsucht nach der Geborgenheit des Mutterschoßes

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

womb

[wuːm] n (Anat) → grembo

womb

(wuːm) noun

the part of the body of a female mammal in which the young are developed and kept until birth.

womb

n. matriz, útero. V.: uterus

womb

n útero, matriz f, vientre m (fam)

References in classic literature ?

Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair: we must exasperate Th' Almighty Victor to spend all his rage, And that must end us, that must be our cure, To be no more; sad cure; for who would loose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through Eternity, To perish rather, swallowd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

Into this wilde Abyss, The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave, Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more Worlds, Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while, Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross.

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This provision then nature herself seems to have furnished all animals with, as well immediately upon their first origin as also when they are arrived at a state of maturity; for at the first of these periods some of them are provided in the womb with proper nourishment, which continues till that which is born can get food for itself, as is the case with worms and birds; and as to those which bring forth their young alive, they have the means for their subsistence for a certain time within themselves, namely milk.

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For stalking to and fro "A sword!" he cried, "Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb That bore a double harvest, me and mine?" And in his frenzy some supernal power

OEDIPUS Then had I never come to shed My father's blood nor climbed my mother's bed; The monstrous offspring of a womb defiled, Co-mate of him who gendered me, and child.

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One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things.

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I am greatly mistaken, if any thing of weight has yet been advanced of this tendency; and I flatter myself, that the observations which have been made in the course of these papers have served to place the reverse of that position in as clear a light as any matter still in the womb of time and experience can be susceptible of.

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That first, they ought to refer matters unto them, which is the first begetting, or impregnation; but when they are elaborate, moulded, and shaped in the womb of their counsel, and grow ripe, and ready to be brought forth, that then they suffer not their counsel to go through with the resolution and direction, as if it depended on them; but take the matter back into their own hands, and make it appear to the world, that the decrees and final directions

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And so Ona went back to Brown's and saved her place and a week's wages; and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women group under the title of "womb trouble," and was never again a well person as long as she lived.

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We cannot, for instance, suppose that in the embryos of the vertebrata the peculiar loop-like course of the arteries near the branchial slits are related to similar conditions,--in the young mammal which is nourished in the womb of its mother, in the egg of the bird which is hatched in a nest, and in the spawn of a frog under water.

For the welfare of a very young animal, as long as it remains in its mother's womb, or in the egg, or as long as it is nourished and protected by its parent, it must be quite unimportant whether most of its characters are fully acquired a little earlier or later in life.

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Removal of the womb (Uterus) by surgery (Hysterectomy) is a good way of saving your life after what you have gone through.