INFANT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Infant

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ˈɪnfənt/ Listen

noun

Infant n.

A child in the first period of life, beginning at his birth; a young babe; sometimes, a child several years of age. "And tender cries of infants pierce the ear."

(Law) A person who is not of full age, or who has not attained the age of legal capacity; a person under the age of twenty-one years; a minor. Note: An infant under seven years of age is not penally responsible; between seven and fourteen years of age, he may be convicted of a malicious offense if malice be proved. He becomes of age on the day preceding his twenty-first birthday, previous to which time an infant has no capacity to contract.

Same as Infante. (Obs.)

verb

Infant v. t. To bear or bring forth, as a child; hence, to produce, in general. (Obs.) "This worthy motto, "No bishop, no king," is... infanted out of the same fears."

adjective

Infant adj.

Of or pertaining to infancy, or the first period of life; tender; not mature; as, infant strength.

Intended for young children; as, an infant school.

See images of 'Infant'

Etymology of 'Infant'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Infant" Quotes from Famous Books

... reports which I have seen of the religious instruction communicated in that highly articulate manner, Calvinism, high and low, has predominated. I strongly suspect the crystal phantoms of Arminianism, though. Fancy the old disputes of infant Christendom perpetuated amongst the paltry ghosts ...

— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... The infant part of the settlement having at this period become very numerous, with a view to save them, if possible, from that ruin in which the infamous examples of their abandoned parents were but too likely to plunge them, the clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Johnson, began to examine them publicly ...

— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... 12.6. (b) Again, in 1911 the corrected birth-rate for Connaught was 45.3 as against a crude rate of 24.7 for England and Wales; and in Connaught, where there is no need for Societies for preventing Parents being Cruel to their Children, the infant mortality rate [27] is very much lower than in England, although the birth-rate is much higher and the poverty much greater. In Bradford, a prosperous English town which pays particular attention to its mothers and children, the infant mortality in 1917 ...

— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... that it never had. Even the mysterious mika operation of so primitive a race as the Australians has been supposed to be a method of controlling conception. But the usual method, even of people highly advanced in culture, has been simpler. They preferred to see the new-born infant before deciding whether it was likely to prove a credit to its parents or to the human race generally, and if it seemed not up to the standard they dealt with it accordingly. At one time that was regarded as a cruel and even inhuman method. To-day, ...

— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... so identified himself with the character he represented as to decline to yield upon almost any terms. Hazlitt censures certain excesses of this kind which disfigured his performance of Richard. "He now actually fights with his doubled fists, after his sword is taken from him, like some helpless infant." "The fight," writes another critic, "was maintained under various vicissitudes, by one of which he was thrown to the earth; on his knee he defended himself, recovered his footing, and pressed his antagonist with renewed fury; his sword was struck ...

— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

More quotes...