1
: a person who assists women in childbirth compare nurse-midwife
2
: one that helps to produce or bring forth something
midwifed
ˈmid-ˌwīft 
or midwived
ˈmid-ˌwīvd
; midwifing
ˈmid-ˌwī-fiŋ
or midwiving
ˈmid-ˌwī-viŋ
or midwived
ˈmid-ˌwīvd
; midwifing
ˈmid-ˌwī-fiŋ
or midwiving
ˈmid-ˌwī-viŋ
: to assist in producing, bringing forth, or bringing about
Examples of midwife in a Sentence
Noun
a trained and certified midwife
Recent Examples on the Web
Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Apr. 2024
At the hospital, a midwife, Monica, also measured Evelyn’s uterus and conducted an ultrasound.
—Amber Ferguson, Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2024
The midwives offered me cold buttered toast and milky black tea.
—Hetty Lui McKinnon, Bon Appétit, 19 Feb. 2024
Nurse midwife Beverly Maldonado recalls a pregnant woman arriving at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Maryland after her water broke.
—Rachana Pradhan and Hannah Recht, USA TODAY, 17 Feb. 2024
At that time, one of the wards became staffed only with midwives.
—Sabrina Sholts, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2024
Other jobs that pretty much always involve liquids include nurse midwives, animal caretakers, cafeteria cooks and, of course, firefighters.
—Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 1 Mar. 2024
Sam Sewell, a licensed and certified professional midwife who has served clients across the D.C. region, previously told The Washington Post that the Williamses’ predicament is unsurprising.
—Ellie Silverman, Washington Post, 5 Mar. 2024
Jeffrey, with the help of a midwife, delivered their son.
—Audrey Schmidt, Peoplemag, 5 Mar. 2024
Richard Barnes, New York Times, 22 Dec. 2023
In retrospect, midwifing Panera’s birth looks like a happy heroic tale of breakthroughs and innovations.
—Ron Shaich, Fortune, 27 Oct. 2023
Again and again, what seems like uniform storytelling is revealed to be an assemblage of fragments, born from defeat and midwifed by division.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2023
Danny DeVito’s character Bruce Davis is likely a nod to Marc Davis, one of the last Imagineers to midwife the Haunted Mansion to completion.
—Vulture, 31 July 2023
In the period from 2014 to 2019, the United States appeared poised to once again midwife a Kurdish entity, this one under different circumstances and with less far-reaching powers, in Syria.
—Henri J. Barkey, Foreign Affairs, 16 Oct. 2019
But at the very center of the American Covid experience, amid all the death and suffering and despite the dysfunction that midwifed it into being, sits what would have stood out, in any previous era, as an astonishing biomedical miracle: the coronavirus vaccines.
—David Wallace-Wells, New York Times, 23 June 2023
And now, The Blob may have helped midwife a record-breaking bloom of algae stretching from Southern California all the way north to Alaska.
—Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 6 Aug. 2015
The idea of the market as a communion of souls was once the lingua franca of European culture, helping to midwife the birth of economics from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries.
—Corey Robin, The New York Review of Books, 17 Nov. 2022
Noun
The midwives were familiar members of their communities – mothers, sisters, friends, and cousins.
—Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Apr. 2024
At the hospital, a midwife, Monica, also measured Evelyn’s uterus and conducted an ultrasound.
—Amber Ferguson, Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2024
The midwives offered me cold buttered toast and milky black tea.
—Hetty Lui McKinnon, Bon Appétit, 19 Feb. 2024
Nurse midwife Beverly Maldonado recalls a pregnant woman arriving at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Maryland after her water broke.
—Rachana Pradhan and Hannah Recht, USA TODAY, 17 Feb. 2024
At that time, one of the wards became staffed only with midwives.
—Sabrina Sholts, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2024
Other jobs that pretty much always involve liquids include nurse midwives, animal caretakers, cafeteria cooks and, of course, firefighters.
—Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 1 Mar. 2024
Sam Sewell, a licensed and certified professional midwife who has served clients across the D.C. region, previously told The Washington Post that the Williamses’ predicament is unsurprising.
—Ellie Silverman, Washington Post, 5 Mar. 2024
Jeffrey, with the help of a midwife, delivered their son.
—Audrey Schmidt, Peoplemag, 5 Mar. 2024
Verb
Gottlieb also greatly admired industriousness as a characteristic, Lizzie says; to that end, the man who midwifed the work of Robert Caro and Salman Rushdie also collected 3-D dog posters, obscure Barbie dolls and macramé owls.
—Richard Barnes, New York Times, 22 Dec. 2023
In retrospect, midwifing Panera’s birth looks like a happy heroic tale of breakthroughs and innovations.
—Ron Shaich, Fortune, 27 Oct. 2023
Again and again, what seems like uniform storytelling is revealed to be an assemblage of fragments, born from defeat and midwifed by division.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2023
Danny DeVito’s character Bruce Davis is likely a nod to Marc Davis, one of the last Imagineers to midwife the Haunted Mansion to completion.
—Vulture, 31 July 2023
In the period from 2014 to 2019, the United States appeared poised to once again midwife a Kurdish entity, this one under different circumstances and with less far-reaching powers, in Syria.
—Henri J. Barkey, Foreign Affairs, 16 Oct. 2019
But at the very center of the American Covid experience, amid all the death and suffering and despite the dysfunction that midwifed it into being, sits what would have stood out, in any previous era, as an astonishing biomedical miracle: the coronavirus vaccines.
—David Wallace-Wells, New York Times, 23 June 2023
And now, The Blob may have helped midwife a record-breaking bloom of algae stretching from Southern California all the way north to Alaska.
—Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 6 Aug. 2015
The idea of the market as a communion of souls was once the lingua franca of European culture, helping to midwife the birth of economics from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries.
—Corey Robin, The New York Review of Books, 17 Nov. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'midwife.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Phrases Containing midwife
Dictionary Entries Near midwife
Cite this Entry
“Midwife.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/midwife. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
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Kids Definition
midwife
noun
mid·wife
ˈmid-ˌwīf
: a woman who helps other women in childbirth
Medical Definition
midwife
noun
mid·wife
ˈmid-ˌwīf
: a person who assists women in childbirth see nurse-midwife
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