Other forms: nurseries
A nursery is where the very young are looked after. It is the room at home with the cot, the night light and the bear on the shelf, and it is also the small school where three-year-olds paint, sing and nap before real school begins.
A third nursery has no children in it at all: a garden nursery, the place that grows plants in rows of black pots and sells you the apple tree. British parents say nursery and nursery school; American parents say preschool or daycare for the same years. The word glues itself to others — nursery rhyme, nursery nurse, nursery slopes for the gentle end of the ski hill. Plant nursery and children's nursery hold the same picture exactly: a protected place where something small is grown until it is ready to be moved out.
1nounnurseryA school or centre for children too young for primary school.~20%
“He starts nursery in September and is already counting the days.”
synonyms: preschool, daycare, kindergarten
2nounroomA room in a house set aside for a baby or small child.~56%
“They painted the nursery pale yellow before the baby came.”
3nounplaceA place where young plants are grown and sold.~24%
“We bought six tomato plants and a bag of compost at the nursery.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 27 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
nursery is a place for the young.
Also accepted in games: preschool, daycare
Nursery came through Old French norricerie, built on norrice, a wet nurse — the woman paid to feed someone else's baby. That traces back to Latin nūtrīcia, from nūtriō, 'to breastfeed, nurse, suckle', and possibly to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to flow'. The baby's room, the little school and the field of saplings all grew out of one job: feeding something too young to feed itself.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)neh₂-
Latin
nūtrīcia — wet nurse
Old French
norricerie
Middle English
noricerie
English, today
nursery
Built from
From Middle English noricerie, norserye (“children's nursery; state of being fostered or nursed; education, upbringing”)norceri, norcerie, norcery, norcerye, norisri, norisrie, norisserie, norisserye, norserie, norserye, norsheri, norshery, norysrye, nursery, from Old French norricerie, nourricerie, from norrice, nourrice (modern French nourrice (“childminder, nanny; wet nurse”)) + -erie. Norrice and nourrice are derived from Latin nūtrīcia (“wet nurse”), from Latin nūtrīcius (“that nurses or suckles; nourishing”), from nūtriō (“to breastfeed, nurse, suckle”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European (s)neh₂- (“to flow”). The English word may be analysed as nourice, nurse ery.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA