couvade

couvade is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 1 sense. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.A custom, among certain barbarous tribes, that when a woman gives birth to a child her husband takes to his bed, as if ill. The world-wide custom of the couvade, where at childbirth the husband undergoes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed for days. Tylor.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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