Birth... a week in images (Day Seven)

Day Seven

Caption: Midwife

[Middle English midwif : probably mid, with (from Old English; see me-2 in Indo-European roots) +wif, woman (from Old English wf).] Word History: 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.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

 © Lisa Gendron