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Maternity   /mətˈərnɪti/   Listen
Maternity

noun
1.
The state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth when a woman carries a developing fetus in her uterus.  Synonyms: gestation, pregnancy.
2.
The kinship relation between an offspring and the mother.  Synonym: motherhood.
3.
The quality of having or showing the tenderness and warmth and affection of or befitting a mother.  Synonyms: maternal quality, maternalism, motherliness.



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"Maternity" Quotes from Famous Books



... blue placidity; her only sense of love the unspoken yearning within, when the soft, tumultuous stress of the west-wind kissed her, who should have been clasped in tender arms and caressed by loving lips; whose dumb, creative instincts, becoming genius instead of maternity, struggled outward from their home in heart and brain to culminate in this world's-wonder, and so build a monument namelessly splendid to the grand nature that found its bread of life was a stone and perished: or whether ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... They have no mean—they leap from extreme to extreme. They are violent, immoderate. It is instant night and instant day; it is the maddest passion of summer always. Nature reigns at the top of her voice and chokes her realm with the fervor of her maternity. Nay, give me the north. I would feel the earth's pulse now and then ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... anyone in the world to help her feebleness, at the mercy of a fugitive like herself, who was free to break to-morrow the bonds of caprice which to-day bound him to her? Was it she, too, who was about to become a mother, and found herself suffering from the excessive misery of blushing for that maternity which is the pride of pure young wives? A thousand memories of her past life flocked through her brain and cruelly revived her despair. Her heart sank as she thought of her old friendships, of her mother, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... good traits recorded of the woman's character. She could never console herself for having let her father be taken away to end his days miserably in a house of charity.[132] And the repudiation of her children, against which the glowing egoism of maternity always rebelled, remained a cruel dart in her bosom as long as she lived. We may suppose that there was that about household life with Rousseau which might have bred disgusts even in one as little fastidious as Theresa was. Among other things which must have been hard to endure, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... upon the warm tufted grass to rest, and, like all mothers, became oblivious of self in attention to the wants of her babe. She had been nursing it at her breast about ten minutes, while her eyes were fixed on its rosy limbs, and her mind revelled in the half-sensuous, half-spiritual delights of maternity, when all at once a mighty clatter of hoofs was heard along the road, followed immediately after by loud shouts of men, the flash of red coats and the clang of sabre-sheaths on the flanks of rushing horses. What ensued ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance


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