[gran-ee] 
noun, plural -nies, adjective -ni⋅er, -ni⋅est for 6.| 1. | Informal. a grandmother. |
| 2. | an elderly woman. |
| 3. | a fussy person. |
| 4. | Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S. a nurse or midwife. |
| 5. | granny knot. |
| 6. | of, pertaining to, or thought to be like a grandmother or an elderly or old-fashioned woman: granny notions about what's proper. |
| 7. | (of clothing for women or girls) being loose-fitted and having such features as high necklines, puff sleeves, long skirts, and ruffles and lace trimmings: a granny blouse; a granny nightgown. |
| an improperly made reef or square knot, likely to slip loose. |
| gran·ny or gran·nie (grān'ē) n. pl. gran·nies
[Short for grandmother or grandam.] |
| mid·wife (mĭd'wīf') n. pl. mid·wives (-wīvz')
[Middle English midwif : probably mid, with (from Old English; see me-2 in Indo-European roots) + wif, woman (from Old English wīf).] Word History: The word midwife is the sort of word whose etymology seems perfectly clear until one tries to figure it out. Wife would seem to refer to the woman giving birth, who is usually a wife, but mid ? A knowledge of older senses of words helps us with this puzzle. Wife in its earlier history meant "woman," as it still did when the compound midwife was formed in Middle English (first recorded around 1300). Mid is probably a preposition, meaning "together with." Thus a midwife was literally a "with woman" or "a woman who assists other women in childbirth." Even though obstetrics has been rather resistant to midwifery until fairly recently, the etymology of obstetric is rather similar, going back to the Latin word obstetrīx, "a midwife," from the verb obstāre, "to stand in front of," and the feminine suffix -trīx; the obstetrīx would thus literally stand in front of the baby. |
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