nurturing

[ nur-cher-ing ]

adjective

1. providing food, protection, comfort, or support:

   Creating safe, nurturing places where all children can grow and develop their unique gifts is a responsibility of all adult members of a society.

noun

1. the act of providing food, protection, support, or encouragement:

   There's no substitute for what nurturing can do for a child.

2. the act or process of educating or training:

   We hope to build an ecosystem in this county that encourages incubation, innovation, and nurturing of entrepreneurs.

Word History and Origins

Origin of nurturing¹

First recorded in 1425–75; nurtur(e) ( def ) + -ing ²( def ) for the adjective sense; nurtur(e) ( def ) + -ing ¹( def ) for the noun senses

Example Sentences

The Library of Congress, which added “You’ll Sing a Song” to the National Registry in 2007, said the work is important “both for its enduring popularity and as an expression of Jenkins’s hallmark methodology of nurturing children’s musicality through ‘call-and-response rhythmic group singing.’

From Los Angeles Times

The new chief added, “We’re here to keep everybody safe in all communities throughout our city, and the way we do that is by nurturing trust.”

From Los Angeles Times

Billy says nurturing the cub back to health made him rediscover the joy he had lost following the recent death of his parents.

From BBC

Their lies also serve the purpose of nurturing misgivings about mainstream journalism, which is undergoing a largely unrelated but no less catastrophic contraction.

From Slate

“Following that, I wanted to be able to continue nurturing and building up a youth movement that was capable of taking back the state of Florida and resisting what I would consider a fascist government in our state,” he said.

From Slate

Related Words

• sustenance