stillbirth

English

Alternative forms

still-birth

Etymology

still +‎ birth

Noun

stillbirth (plural stillbirths)

The birth of a dead fetus; the delivery of an infant which is dead at birth.
(medicine) The birth of a dead fetus after 20 weeks of gestation.
- 1988, Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 5890
  Each year, approximately a million pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of the newborn child.

Usage notes

Many uses of the term stillbirth (and almost all modern medical uses) differentiate it from miscarriage, for either of two reasons. (1) In the older and broader senses of the terms, the concepts are distinct but are often instantiated together, because many stillbirths (where a stillbirth is any event where a baby is born dead) result from miscarriage (where a miscarriage is any instance of carrying [gestation] being interrupted prematurely). However, occasionally fetuses die during or right before full-term birth (for various reasons), in which case a stillbirth with no miscarriage has occurred, in these older and broader senses of the terms. (2) More importantly, regarding current usage, the modern medical senses of the terms are generally defined mutually exclusively with a dividing line at the gestational age of 20 weeks (which represents periviability), reserving the term miscarriage for earlier events and the term stillbirth for later events.

Related terms

stillborn

Translations

birth of a dead fetus

Arabic: please add this translation if you can
Bulgarian: мъртво раждане n (mǎrtvo raždane)
Chinese:
Mandarin: 死胎 (zh) (sǐtāi), 死產／死产 (zh) (sǐchǎn)
Danish: dødsfødsel c
Dutch: doodgeboorte
Finnish: kuolleena syntyminen
French: mortinaissance f, mortinatalité (fr) f
German: Totgeburt (de) f
Greek: θνησιγένεια (el) f (thnisigéneia)
Hungarian: halvaszületés
Icelandic: andvana fæðing
Italian: mortinatalità f
Japanese: 死産 (ja) (しざん, shizan)
Korean: 사산(死産) (ko) (sasan)
Latin: mortinatalitas f (New Latin), partus mortuus (Classical Latin)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: dødfødsel m
Nynorsk: dødfødsel m
Portuguese: mortinatalidade f, morte fetal f
Russian: мертворожде́ние (ru) n (mertvoroždénije)
Spanish: parto muerto m, mortinato m
Turkish: ölü doğum (tr)
Ukrainian: мертвонаро́дження n (mertvonaródžennja)