Other forms: newborns
A newborn is a baby only days old — still curled up, still asleep most of the hour, still being weighed at every visit. It is the word midwives and health visitors use for the first weeks of a life.
It works as an adjective just as easily: a newborn baby, a newborn lamb, newborn twins. The stretch is short — after a month or two the baby is an infant, by a year a toddler, and nobody calls a walking child newborn. It carries over to anything brand new and fragile: a newborn republic, a newborn hope. American medical writing uses the noun constantly (newborn screening, newborn care), while British writing leans on newborn baby. It takes a plural like any other noun: six newborns on the ward.
1nounnewbornA baby in its first days or weeks of life.
“The ward had six newborns in it that morning.”
2adjectivebornJust born.
“A newborn lamb was standing in the wet grass by the gate.”
3adjectivenewlyNewly begun and still fragile.
“The newborn company had four employees and one client.”
newborn is a baby.
Newborn hides nothing at all: new plus born, two plain old English words pressed into one. There is no buried root to dig for and no shift of meaning to explain. That is worth noticing in itself — a learner can build this word before ever meeting it.
From new + born. From new + born.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove, Babies & Growing Up
First appears in chapter 28 of A Man Called Ove.
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