A woman who is hired to suckle and nurse another woman’s child. Cf. DRY-NURSE.
1620. Middleton, Chaste Maid, II. ii. I call the Wet Nurse hither.
a. 1633. Austin, Medit. (1635), 45. Shee was both wet-Nurse, and dry-Nurse herselfe. And yet this his handmaid was his Mother.
1689. Full Answ. Depos. Birth Pr. Wales, 7. Query, Whether she did not use to provide a Wet-Nurse, at her other Deliveries.
1776. Pennsylvania Even. Post, 8 Feb., 70/2. Wants a place, as Wet Nurse, a young woman with a good breast of milk.
1888. Miss Braddon, Fatal Three, I. iii. A wet-nurse being wanted at the great house.
transf. and fig. 1826. Hood, Irish Schoolm., xxi. How Romulus was bred in savage wood, By wet-nurse wolf, devoid of wolfish rage.
1884. Gilmour, Mongols, xxxii. 375. China has acted the wet-nurse to Mongolia, and discharged her duty well.
