accouchement

Borrowed from French accoucher (“to be delivered of a child, to aid in delivery”), from Old French acouchier (“to lay down, put to bed, go to bed”), from Latin ad + collocare (“to lay, put, place”). See collate.

• IPA^(key): /əˈkuːʃmənt/

accouchement (countable and uncountable, plural accouchements)

1. Delivery in childbed; parturition

   Custom required that the royal family and the whole Court should be present at the accouchement of the Princesses.

   • 1763 June, “An account of the law-suit concerning the succession to the late Duke of Douglas, continued”, in The Scots Magazine, volume 25, page 308:

     The prevalence of the reports contradictory to this supposed legitimacy, rendered it necessary to be more minute, than might in common cases have been requisite, in proving the precise time and place of Lady Jane Douglas's alledged accouchement […]

   • 1820, Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer, volume 1, page 156:

     a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of her accouchement

   • 1856, St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal (volume 14, page 153)

     A physician was occupied in making an autopsia of a woman dead of puerperal fever, when some one came for him to terminate an accouchement in the town.

• childbearing
• childbirth
• vaginal birth

accoucher +‎ -ment

• IPA^(key): /a.kuʃ.mɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

accouchement m (plural accouchements)

1. delivery (act of giving birth)

• enceinte
• grossesse
• bébé
• mère

• “accouchement” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).