"deliver of"

[Odessa Dawn]

The above photo has been extracted from: Kate Middleton has a baby boy - NYPOST.com

I quote the following from Cambridge Dictionaries Online:


"formal The princess has been delivered of (= has given birth to) a healthy baby boy."
deliver verb (GIVE BIRTH) - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online


Also, this is from Free Dictionary:
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"a. To give birth to: She delivered a baby boy this morning."
deliver - definition of deliver by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

As you see, according to Cambridge Dictionaries Online, deliver of is formal. While Free Dictionary has no of after the verb deliver. Why has the word formal been used here "formal The princess has been delivered of (= has given birth to) a healthy baby boy." please?

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[Rover_KE]

The formal announcement " The princess has been delivered of a healthy baby boy" is passive. She didn't do it alone; someone helped the tot to emerge. It's formal because it's meant to sound portentous and momentous.

The semi-formal announcement "She delivered a baby boy this afternoon" is active. It's a simple statement of what happened and tells us all we need to know.

The same goes for the informal announcement "She had a baby boy this afternoon".