infant

Pluralinfants

Formsinfants, infanting, infanted

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A very young child, from birth to between six months and two years old, who needs almost constant care and attention.

   The infant cried whenever she was set down in the crib.

   Doctors advise that an infant be fed on demand during the first months.

   Similarbaby

   Oppositeadult

   Note

   The word hides a silence. Latin īnfāns meant 'not able to speak', from īn- 'not' and fāns, the present participle of for, 'to speak', so an infant is, at root, a child who cannot yet talk. Baby is the everyday synonym. Infant leans toward the clinical and official, as in infant care, infant formula and infant mortality.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who has not yet reached the age of legal majority.

   The property was held in trust until the infant came of age.

   A contract made by an infant can often be canceled at his choosing.

   Similarminor

   Oppositeadult

   Note

   Law uses the word for anyone under the age of majority, however grown. William Peere Williams's Reports of 1793 records a nephew who died 'an infant about sixteen years old'. In legal prose, read infant as minor, not as the word for babies. Such a person lacks full capacity to make binding contracts and usually sues or is sued through a guardian.

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   In an early stage of development; just beginning and still small, close to where it started.

   The infant tech sector showed promise despite its tiny size.

   These ideas were still infant, barely sketched out on paper.

   Similarfledgling, nascent, embryonic, budding, emerging

   Oppositemature, established, developed

   Note

   Rivers have infancies too. Near its source a river is still small, and William J. Skillern's 'The Brynmawr & Western Valleys Railway' (1957) describes the infant River Ebbw as 'a little more than a yard wide'. The adjective sits before the noun, often before a river's name. It is not compared: a stream is infant or it is not, never more infant.

4. 4
   nounCommonwealthIrelandUKcountable

   A child attending an infant school, or in the earliest years of a UK primary school.

   The infant struggled to reach the high coat pegs in the classroom.

   Each morning the infants gathered on the carpet for the register.

   Note

   A schoolroom word, chiefly British, Irish and Commonwealth. The infants are the youngest pupils, roughly four to seven, before they move up to the junior years. It is usually plural and collective, as in the infants assembled or a teacher of infants. Elsewhere it can be misheard as the word for babies, an age these children have long outgrown.

5. 5
   adjectiveCommonwealthIrelandUK

   Relating to the earlier half of primary school education in the UK.

   He moved from the infant department to teach the older pupils.

   The infant curriculum focuses on early reading and simple counting.

   Note

   The school system turned into a modifier: the infant department, the infant curriculum, the Infant years. It stands only before a noun and is never compared. In Ireland the two Infant years come before six numbered classes and match what other countries call pre-school. For the pupils themselves, see the schoolchild noun.

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