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An infant; a young child of either sex; a baby.

Babyhood. [R.] Udall.

f Shinar, where the confusion of languages took place. Therefore is the name of it called Babel. Gen. xi. 9.

Finery of a kind to please a child. [Obs.] "Painted babery." Sir P. Sidney.

To frighten. [Archaic] "Fit tales . . . to affrighten babes." Southey.

assail; as, to assault a reputation or an administration. Before the gates, the cries of babes newborn, . . . Assault his ears. Dryden.

Like a babe; a childish; babyish. [R.] "Babish imbecility." Drayton. -- Bab"ish*ly, adv. -- Bab"ish*ness, n. [R.]

An infant or young child of either sex; a babe.

Confused; Babel-like.

A child or babe; as, a forward chit; also, a young, small, or insignificant person or animal. A little chit of a woman. Thackeray.

Childish; like a babe. [Obs.]

alects of Greece; the Yorkshire dialect; the dialect of the learned. In the midst of this Babel of dialects there suddenly appeared a standard English language. Earle. [Charles V.] could address his subjects from every quarter in their native dialect. Prescott.

ites and ceremonies; a great dispersion of the human family took place at the building of Babel. The days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished. Jer. xxv. 34.

child, brother, etc., as regards sustenance and nurture, but not by tie of blood. Foster babe, or child, an infant of child nursed by a woman not its mother, or bred by a man not its father. -- Foster brother, Foster sister, one who is, or has been, nursed at the same breast, or brought up by the same nurse as anothe…

n walls, or as within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate. Those tender babes Whom envy hath immured within your walls. Shak. This huge convex of fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round. Milton.

to space or place; as, he lives in Boston; he traveled in Italy; castles in the air. The babe lying in a manger. Luke ii. 16. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west. Shak. Situated in the forty-first degree of latitude. Gibbon. Matter for censure in every page. Macaulay.

The state or period of being an infant; the first part of life; early childhood. The babe yet lies in smiling infancy. Milton. Their love in early infancy began. Dryden.

A child in the first period of life, beginning at his birth; a young babe; sometimes, a child several years of age. And tender cries of infants pierce the ear. C. Pitt.

Life; existence. O, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born ! Pope.

o speak unto them after their own capacity, and to lispe words unto them according as the babes and children of that age might sound them again. Tyndale.