give birth to
Idioms-
Bear a child, as in She gave birth to her first child exactly at midnight . [Early 1800s]
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Also, give rise to . Be the cause or origin of. For example, His hobby gave birth to a very successful business , or The economic situation gave rise to widespread dissatisfaction . The first term dates from the early 1700s, the second from the late 1700s.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
According to the filing, a deal was “orchestrated” in which “Riley Keough gave her eggs to Travolta so that Kelly could give birth to their son, Ben Travolta” and “Riley was given an old Jaguar and paid between $10,000 - $20,000 for the deal.”
From Los Angeles Times
Current rules stipulate that a pregnant women cannot compete within a 14-week period - from six weeks before they give birth, to eight weeks after.
From BBC
Georgia’s policies around life and death were recently thrust into the spotlight in the case of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse who was kept alive, brain-dead, as a vessel to give birth to a baby without her consent.
From Slate
When that happens, I feel like they think that everything that we went through to give birth to our children, to get them to America, to educate them, to pay their school fees, to pay their college, it’s paying off, because they are now kind of shedding some of the generational curses, and they don’t have to pay for the mistakes that we’ve made anymore.
From Los Angeles Times
To maintain a stable population, women need to give birth to 2.1 children on average during their lifetimes.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
