different between womb vs unbirth

English

Alternative forms

• wame (dialectal)

Etymology

From Middle English wombe, wambe, from Old English womb, wamb (“belly, stomach; bowels; heart; womb; hollow”), from Proto-Germanic *wamb? (“belly, stomach, abdomen”). Cognate with Scots wam, wame (“womb”), Dutch wam (“dewlap of beef; belly of a fish”), German Wamme, Wampe (“paunch, belly”), Danish vom (“belly, paunch, rumen”), Swedish våmb (“belly, stomach, rumen”), Norwegian vom (“rumen”), Icelandic vömb (“belly, abdomen, stomach”), Old Welsh gumbelauc (“womb”), Breton gwamm (“woman, wife”), Sanskrit ??? (vap??, “the skin or membrane lining the intestines or parts of the viscera, the caul or omentum”). Superseded non-native Middle English mater, matere (“womb”) and matris, matrice (“womb”) borrowed from Latin m?ter (“womb”) and Old French matrice (“womb”), respectively.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wu?m/
• Rhymes: -u?m

Noun

womb (plural wombs)

1. (anatomy) In female mammals, the organ in which the young are conceived and grow until birth; the uterus. [from 8^thc.]
2. (obsolete) The abdomen or stomach. [8^th-17^thc.]

   • And his hede, hym semed,was enamyled with asure, and his shuldyrs shone as the golde, and his wombe was lyke mayles of a merveylous hew […].

3. (obsolete) The stomach of a person or creature. [8^th-18^thc.]
4. (figuratively) A place where something is made or formed. [from 15^thc.]

   • The womb of earth the genial seed receives.

   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, part 2, chapter 7

     The shadows of the future hours rose dark and menacing from the womb of time [...]

5. Any cavity containing and enveloping anything.
   • 1855, Robert Browning, Popularity

     The centre spike of gold / Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb.

Synonyms

• (organ in mammals): uterus, matrix (poetic or literary), belly (poetic or literary)

Derived terms

• wombless
• womblike
• wombly
• wombman
• wombmate
• womby

Related terms

Translations

Verb

womb (third-person singular simple present wombs, present participle wombing, simple past and past participle wombed)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To enclose in a womb, or as if in a womb; to breed or hold in secret.

References

Further reading

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “womb”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

Middle English

Noun

womb

1. Alternative form of wombe

English

Etymology

un- +? birth

Noun

unbirth (uncountable)

1. The absence of birth; failure to be born.
   • 1993, Frank Northen Magill, Magill's Literary Annual, 1993

     His death is a kind of unbirth, and the imagery that surrounds it is physical and sexual.
2. A paraphilia in which the individual desires to be drawn back through the vagina into the womb.
   • 2001, "Hyndis Kogler", FUR:UB #10(last page, overstuffed belly) (on Internet newsgroup fur.artwork.erotica)

     Maybe a bunch of bi incest, [summoning a] muscular, two-cocked demon of some sort, unbirth, and then another demon shows up and mounts the second demon with the female drow in hir belly, and also takes the drow in the same stroke inside her.

   • 2005, "Lord Flame Stryke", Re: Curious (on newsgroup alt.fan.dragons)

     Me, I like vore and unbirth. But then, I'm strange […]