womb
/wuːm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.63 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
In female mammals, the organ in which the young are conceived and grow until birth; the uterus.
noun
Example Sentences
- "I danced myself right out the womb / Is it strange to dance so soon?"
- "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[…]."
- "The womb of earth the genial seed receives."
- "The shadows of the future hours rose dark and menacing from the womb of time [...]"
- "The centre spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb."
Etymology
From Middle English wombe, wambe, from Old English womb, wamb (“belly, stomach; bowels; heart; womb; hollow”), from Proto-West Germanic *wambu, from Proto-Germanic *wambō (“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 वपा (vapā́, “the skin or membrane lining the intestines or parts of the viscera, the caul or omentum”). Superseded nonnative Middle English mater, matere (“womb”), and matris, matrice (“womb”) borrowed from Latin māter (“womb”) and Old French matrice (“womb”), respectively.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: wombe, womb, *wambu, *wambō