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ng to adoption; made or acquired by adoption; fitted to adopt; as, an adoptive father, an child; an adoptive language. -- A*dopt"ive*ly, adv.

An illegitimate child. [R.]

Property given, usually by a parent to a child, in advance of a future distribution.

towards; as, filial, social, or conjugal affections; to have an affection for or towards children. All his affections are set on his own country. Macaulay.

To fix the paternity of; -- said of an illegitimate child; as, to affiliate the child to (or on or upon) one man rather than another.

The establishment or ascertaining of parentage; the assignment of a child, as a bastard, to its father; filiation.

eing frightened; sudden fear or alarm. [Archaic] Passionate words or blows . . . fill the child's mind with terror and affrightment. Locke.

The act of pouring upon, or sprinkling with a liquid, as water upon a child in baptism. Specifically: (Med)

The pains which succeed childbirth, as in expelling the afterbirth.

Failure of the due secretion of milk after childbirth.

Pertaining to an Attic festival at the naming of a child; -- so called because the friends of the parents carried the child around the hearth and then named it.

cupy in a pleasant manner; to stir with pleasing or mirthful emotions; to divert. A group children amusing themselves with pushing stones from the top [of the cliff], and watching as they plunged into the lake. Gilpin.

anatomized or dissected, or which has the appearance of being so. The anatomy of a little child, representing all parts thereof, is accounted a greater rarity than the skeleton of a man in full stature. Fuller. They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy. Shak.

spirit, and for cruel bondage. Ex. vi. 9. Anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child. Jer. iv. 31.

To attribute a human form or personality to. You may see imaginative children every day anthropomorphizing. Lowell.

ure of an apostle. One or more were offered by sponsors at baptism as a present to the godchild. B. Jonson.

Having a round, broad face, like an apple. "Apple-faced children." Dickens.

oyment of means to accomplish an end; specific use. If a right course . . . be taken with children, there will not be much need of the application of the common rewards and punishments. Locke.

point them every one to his service. Num. iv. 19. These were cities appointed for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth among them. Josh. xx. 9.

sion; readiness in learning; docility; as, an aptness to learn is more observable in some children than in others.