gravid
Pronunciation
  • (RP, GA) IPA: /ˈɡɹævɪd/
Adjective

gravid

  1. Pregnant; now used chiefly of egg-laying animals, or metaphorically.
    • 1921, Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow:
      In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world.
    • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses (novel):
      The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a country stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature
    • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 568:
      The minute she'd settled into the seat next to him, her billowing widow's rig had got redisposed to reveal her neatly gravid waistline, at which, now, he nodded.
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