Baby
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The baby, like a sailor cast forth from the fierce waves, lies naked on the ground, unable to speak, in need of every sort of help to stay alive, when first nature casts it forth with birth contractions from its mother’s womb into the shores of light. And it fills the whole place with mournful weeping, as is fitting for one to whom such trouble remains in life." --De Rerum Natura by Lucretius quoted in The Monarchy of Fear (2018) by Martha Nussbaum |
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A baby is a very young human being, an infant, from birth to a couple of years old. It can refer to any very young animal, especially a vertebrate; many species have specific names for their babies, such as kittens for the babies of cats, puppies for the babies of dogs, and chicks for the babies of birds.
It is also a term of endearment for a girlfriend or boyfriend or a form of address to a man or a woman considered to be attractive.
Etymology
From Middle English babee, babi (“baby”), from babe (“babe, baby”), equivalent to babe + -y/-ie (“endearing and diminutive suffix”).
See also
- Baby (Donnie and Joe Emerson)
- On the helplessness of human babies in 'De rerum natura'
- Babes in the Wood
- Crybaby
- Baby farming
- Foundling