Why "With Child" and not "With A Child"?

Question

Im a young guy, so please dont step on my feet for asking this, but Ive always wondered why some people say "I am with child" instead of "I am with A child", or any other variation? It has never made any sense to me. What's with the poor english?

Answer 1

I am just guessing, but if you say you're "with a child", it means a child is presently with you.  I have always heard the phrase "with child" meaning being pregnant.

Answer 2

It's not poor English, it's perfectly correct. Why not another variation? Because that's the perfectly correct phrase they chose to say. Sure, they could say it some other way, but there is nothing wrong with saying it that way.

Why "pulling my leg" and not "joking with me"? Why "up a creek" rather than "in trouble"? Why not?

Answer 3

It's generally attributed to slang terminology.

Answer 4

Not sure of the origin of the term, but "with child" has always meant that a woman is pregnant, whereas being "with a child" implies that she is in the presence or company of a child.

Answer 5

Eh. It's not necessarily "poor English".

My first thought was that this might be a direct, word for word, translation from Latin or Greek, since so many of our medical terms come from those. I don't see anything that confirms that, although I'm kind of rushed and can't do a thorough check right now.

Next thought was that it could be a hand-me-down English term. It's certainly a traditional phrase, and we got a lot of our odd traditional phrases from the English.

I looked it up, and it's listed as an idiom that came to us from the Middle English @ 1400s (cild means "child"), and traslates from the Old English also recorded as "mid berne" meaning "with child" exactly translated. This idiom probably developed because speaking of pregnancy plainly was taboo.

Idioms are not meant to say things directly and correctly. The meaning is hidden or implied. The relatively late entry (1400s) of this term in English word histories is thought to indicate that taboo status.

Answer 6

because in the beginning you don't know if it is a child or children.