infant
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈɪn.fənt/
Noun

infant (plural infants)

  1. A very young human being, from birth to somewhere between six months and two years of age, needing almost constant care and/or attention.
    • Synonyms: baby
  2. (legal) A minor.
    • 1793, William Peere Williams, Samuel Compton Cox, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, and of Some Special Cases Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench [1695-1735], De Term. S. Trin. 1731, page 602:
      Thomas Humphrey Doleman died the 30th of August 1712, an infant, intestate and without issue; Lewis the next nephew died the 17th of April 1716, an infant about sixteen years old, having left his mother Mary Webb, ...
  3. (obsolete) A noble or aristocratic youth.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
      Retourned home, the royall Infant fell / Into her former fitt [...].
Related terms Translations Translations Verb

infant (infants, present participle infanting; past and past participle infanted)

  1. (obsolete) To bear or bring forth (a child); to produce, in general.
    • 1641, John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavvses that hitherto have hindred it., Printed, for Thomas Underhill; republished as Will Taliaferro Hale, editor, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (Yale Studies in English; LIV), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916, OCLC 260112239 ↗:
      This worthy motto, "No bishop, no king," is […] infanted out of the same fears.



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