babies

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of baby.

   Newborn babies sleep for most of the day.

   The hospital welcomed three babies before dawn.

   Note

   A regular consonant-plus-y plural: the y becomes i and takes -es. It carries every sense of the singular. Babies can be newborns, the young of any animal, grown adults acting childishly, or newcomers to a field. The same spelling is also the verb meaning "pampers". A following object marks the verb (she babies her plants), while a plural verb marks the noun (the babies are asleep).

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of baby.

   Their coach babies the younger players during tough practices.

   She babies every plant in her garden until it thrives.

   Note

   Here the word means pampering, and the verb is always transitive. Someone babies a person, coddling them like an infant, or babies a thing, fussing over it with more care than it needs: a sore knee, a car, a garden. It follows a singular subject such as he, she or the coach. Its spelling matches the plural noun, and an object after it is the giveaway.

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