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One who nurses; a nurse; one who cherishes or encourages growth.

The act of nursing. [Obs.] "Her kind nursery." Shak.

One who cultivates or keeps a nursery, or place for rearing trees, etc.

Nursers, -- a term applied to those birds whose young are hatched in a very immature and helpless condition, so as to require the care of their parents for some time; -- opposed to præcoces.

The hero of a mediæval French nursery legend, who, leaving home, enjoined his young wife not to open a certain room in his castle. She entered it, and found the murdered bodies of his former wives. -- Also used adjectively of a subject which it is forbidden to investigate. The Bluebeard chamber of his mind, into which…

A public nursery, where the young children of poor women are cared for during the day, while their mothers are at work.

e book, thus dandled into popularity by bishops and good ladies, contained many pieces of nursery eloquence. Jeffrey.

the Americans laid before Europe that noble Declaration, which ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned on the porch of every royal palace. Buckle.

A nursery of snails. [Obs.] Addison.

erated to destroy germs or insects; esp., the apparatus used to destroy San José scale on nursery stock, with hydrocyanic acid vapor.

en in office and is turned out. Shak. -- Jack the Giant Killer, the hero of a well-known nursery story. -- Jack-with-a-lantern, Jack-o'-lantern. (a) An ignis fatuus; a will-o'-the-wisp. "[Newspaper speculations] supplying so many more jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian." Lowell. (b) A lantern made of a pumpkin…

A place where roses are cultivated; a nursery of roses. See Rosary, 1.

or Seed plot, the ground on which seeds are sown, to produce plants for transplanting; a nursery. -- Seed stalk (Bot.), the stalk of an ovule or seed; a funicle. -- Seed tick (Zoöl.), one of several species of ticks resembling seeds in form and color. -- Seed vessel (Bot.), that part of a plant which contains the s…

A piece of ground where seed is sown for producing plants for transplantation; a nursery; a seed plat. [Obs.] Mortimer. But if you draw them [seedling] only for the thinning of your seminary, prick them into some empty beds. Evelyn.