nurture · noun — the act of nourishing or nursing; tender care. It carries an Arena rating of 1781, earned across 22 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, nurture ranks #440 of 17,136 for Most Elegant Words, #537 of 17,146 for Most Malleable Words, #1,782 of 17,135 for Most Beautiful Words, #6,161 of 17,136 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
nurture is pronounced /ˈnɜːɹ.t͡ʃəɹ/.
Why “nurture” is a great word
To provide the care, nourishment, and encouragement necessary for growth and development. From Middle English norture, noriture, from Old French norriture, norreture, from Late Latin nutritura ('nourishment'), from Latin nutrire ('to nourish, to suckle'). Unlike "foster," which implies temporary or formalized guardianship, or "destroy," its direct antithesis, to nurture is to commit to the foundational act of feeding—body, mind, or spirit. It is the gardener's hand loosening soil around a struggling sapling, the mother's voice reading the same picture book until the binding softens, the slow turning of compost into black earth—the patient, unglamorous labor of making possible what is not yet, but could be.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From Middle English norture, noriture, from Old French norriture, norreture, from Late Latin nutritura (“nourishment”), from Latin nutrire (“to nourish”).
noun
- The act of nourishing or nursing; tender care
- That which nourishes; food; diet.
- The environmental influences that contribute to a person’s development (as opposed to "nature").
- The act or process of encouraging the growth or development of something.e.g.“The problem is aggravated by the fact that much of the gay sub-culture is not conducive to the nurture of the radical ego integrity of which Erikson speaks.” — 1976 February 7, Philip Gambone, “Coming Out: The Gay Identity Process”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 4:
verb
- To nourish or nurse.
- To encourage, especially the growth or development of something.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.