womb
Americannoun
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wombs
plural
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the uterus of the human female and certain higher mammals.
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the place in which anything is formed or produced.
the womb of time.
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the interior of anything.
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Obsolete. the belly.
noun
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the nontechnical name for uterus
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a hollow space enclosing something, esp when dark, warm, or sheltering
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a place where something is conceived
the Near East is the womb of western civilization
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obsolete the belly
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of womb
before 900; Middle English, Old English: belly, womb; cognate with Dutch wam, German Wamme, Gothic wamba belly; cf. wamus
Explanation
A womb is the organ in which female mammals grow and carry a fetus before it's ready to be born. Your first home was a womb, but good luck trying to return there. Womb is a slightly more casual, everyday way to say uterus. Whichever word you use, it's the name of the organ that biologically female mammals have for growing fetuses before birth. Many animals have two wombs, but humans just have one. In Old English, womb meant "uterus," but it also meant "belly, bowels, or heart."
Vocabulary lists containing womb
Unit 1: Telling Details
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"The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," Vocabulary from Act 2
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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.
See Examples For:
This meant that children born just a few months apart had very different levels of sugar exposure both in the womb and during early childhood.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
Endometriosis is where cells similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body, resulting in what Barnett has described as "bone-grinding, life-altering pain".
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
"From the womb," she says, when I ask her when her passion started.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
Zika can spread from a birthing parent to their child in the womb and cause congenital disabilities, which notoriously led to panic after an outbreak erupted in Brazil in 2015.
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2026
Yeah, that’s a lot to expect him to get, but me, Sonny, and Malik have been tight since womb days.
From "On the Come Up" by Angie Thomas
With this new definition, people who need to “borrow” DNA and wombs from fertility helpers—egg donors, sperm donors, and gestational carriers—have more protection from being discriminated against at fertility clinics and by insurance companies.
From Slate ● Nov. 6, 2023
To make it weirder, the association that trained Johnson bases their ideas on the teachings of the Greek physician Hippocrates, who died in 370 B.C., and believed that women's wombs could "wander" through their bodies.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2023
After the 2017 study generated extensive media coverage, fears spread that artificial wombs could one day replace pregnancy.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 18, 2023
Dr Stewart said some of those women are having to make "life-changing decisions" about having their ovaries, wombs and fallopian tubes removed to "manage their premenstrual symptoms".
From BBC ● Apr. 20, 2023
Some had seven or eight and didn’t understand how fortunate they were, how blessed that their children had flourished in their wombs, lived to squirm in their arms and take the milk from their breasts.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
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.
