babying

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of coddling or pampering someone, giving them far more care and protection than an adult needs.

   Like a greenhouse plant kept so sheltered that it wilts the moment it meets real weather.

   His parents' constant babying left him unprepared for life away from home.

   There's a fine line between supporting a friend and babying them through every small setback.

   Similarcoddling, pampering, mollycoddling, overprotection, cosseting

   Note

   Usually a mass noun for a pattern of treatment, but it can also be counted, naming separate acts of pampering. Jean Rikhoff's The Sweetwater (1976) uses the plural that way: "the babyings from an Indian," one of several things working against a plain woman. Use babyings when you mean particular indulgences, and babying when you mean the overall habit.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of baby.

   He keeps babying his employees instead of letting them handle their own mistakes.

   They were babying the injured player, refusing to let him train at all.

   Note

   Always transitive: the verb needs an object, someone or something being babied. Beyond coddling a person like an infant, it stretches to things tended with fussy, protective care, such as an old car, a sore knee or a temperamental machine. As a gerund it can head a phrase of its own (babying him won't help), which is where it shades into the noun for pampering.

   He's been babying that old car for years, never driving it over fifty.

   She kept babying her sprained ankle long after it had healed.

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