[f. FOSTER sb.1] A nurse who brings up another’s child as her own.

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1607.  Wilkins, Miseries Inforst Marr., 1. B iij.

        Your hands hath bin to me like bounties purse,
Neuer shut vp, your selfe my foster-Nurse:
Nothing can from your honor come.

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1856.  Froude, Hist. Eng., II. 245. The foster nurse first chanted the spell over the cradle in wild passionate melodies.

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  fig.  1600.  Shaks., As You Like It, II. iii. 40.

                    I haue fiue hundred Crownes,
The thriftie hire I saued vnder your Father,
Which I did store to be my foster Nurse.

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1873.  Symonds, Grk. Poets, x. 311. The forests of the North, where nature is rather an awful mother than a kind foster-nurse and friend of man.

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