Origins
The word 'nurse' has undergone one of the most dramatic semantic transformations in English medical vocabulary. It comes from Old French 'norrice' (wet nurse), from Late Latin 'nūtrīcia,' from Latin 'nūtrīx' (she who nourishes, a wet nurse), from the verb 'nūtrīre' (to nourish, to suckle). For the first five centuries of its English life, 'nurse' meant primarily a wet nurse — a woman employed to breastfeed and care for another woman's child. The modern meaning, a trained professional who tends the sick in hospitals, did not become the primary sense until the nineteenth century.
The Latin verb 'nūtrīre' descends from PIE *sneh₂- (to flow, to swim, to let flow), a root whose connection to nursing is through the idea of flowing milk. The same root produced, through different paths, Greek 'náein' (to flow) and possibly 'nēkhein' (to swim). Within the Latin family, 'nūtrīre' generated an enormous set of English words: 'nourish' (from Old French 'norrir,' from Latin 'nūtrīre'), 'nurture' (from Old French 'norreture,' upbringing), 'nutrient' (that which nourishes), 'nutrition,' and 'nutritious.' All of these words connect back to the fundamental act of feeding.
The shift from 'wet nurse' to 'medical caregiver' occurred gradually. In the sixteenth century, 'nurse' began to be used for anyone who tended the sick, not just one who suckled infants. But this was typically domestic and informal care — a family member or servant who sat with an ill person. The professionalization of nursing was driven primarily by Florence Nightingale, whose work during the Crimean War (1854-1856) and subsequent founding of the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas' Hospital in London (1860) transformed nursing from an informal domestic role into a trained medical profession. Nightingale did not coin the medical use of the word, but her work permanently shifted its center of gravity from the nursery to the hospital.
Figurative Development
The word 'nursery' preserves the original meaning more faithfully — it is the room where young children are nursed and cared for. A plant nursery extends the metaphor: a place where young plants are nourished until they are strong enough to be transplanted. The verb 'to nurse' retains multiple senses: to nurse a baby (to breastfeed), to nurse a patient (to tend the sick), to nurse a drink (to consume slowly and carefully), to nurse a grudge (to tend it, keep it alive). All of these uses descend from the same core idea of careful, sustained attention to something that needs nourishment or tending.
The gender history of the word is significant. Latin 'nūtrīx' is grammatically feminine, and for most of its history 'nurse' was an exclusively female-gendered word. The assumption that nursing was women's work — an extension of the maternal act of breastfeeding — persisted well into the twentieth century. The gradual entry of men into the nursing profession in the late twentieth century required the language to stretch: 'male nurse' was common for decades before the unmodified 'nurse' became gender-neutral in standard usage.