stillborn

• still-born

First attested 1597, from English still +‎ born

• IPA^(key): /ˈstɪlbɔː(ɹ)n/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

stillborn (not comparable)

1. Dead at birth.

   Synonym: (dated, rare) deadborn

   Antonym: (archaic) quickborn

   • 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?

2. (figuratively, by extension) Ignored, without influence, or unsuccessful from the outset; abortive.

   Synonym: unfruitful

   • 1859, Charles Reade, chapter 11, in Love Me Little, Love Me Long:

     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, chapter 18, in The Highgrader:

     His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song, but the sound died stillborn.

stillborn (plural stillborns)

1. A baby that is born dead.
   • 2016, Alok Sharma, A Practical Guide to Third Trimester of Pregnancy & Puerperium:

     About 35% of stillborns are discovered to have major structural anomalies by chromosomal studies and autopsy findings.