Stillborn
Alternative forms
Full definition of stillborn
Adjective
stillborn
- Dead at birth.
- 1768, Horace Walpole, "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III,"Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son.
- 1978, Holy Bible (New International Version), Job 3:16,Or why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?
- (figuratively, by extension) Ignored, without influence, or unsuccessful from the outset; abortive.
- 1859, Charles Reade, Love Me Little, Love Me Long, ch. 11,This, gentlemen, is a list of the joint-stock companies created last year. . . . Of these some were stillborn, but the majority hold the market.
- 1915, William MacLeod Raine, The Highgrader, ch. 18,His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song, but the sound died stillborn.