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children; the condition or time from infancy to puberty. I have walked before you from my childhood. 1. Sam. xii. 2.

The state of growing up from childhood to manhood or womanhood; youth, or the period of life between puberty and maturity, generally considered to be, in the male sex, from fourteen to twenty-one. Sometimes used with reference to the lower animals.

Growing; advancing from childhood to maturity. Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong, Detain their adolescent charge too long. Cowper.

Exculpation by testimony to one's veracity or innocence. He was privileged from his childhood from suspicion of incontinency and needed no compurgation. Bp. Hacket.

One whose mind is impaired by age; one in second childhood. The sickly dotard wants a wife. Prior.

ndship. Johnson. A trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers. Hawthorne.

A termination denoting state, condition, quality, character, totality, as in manhood, childhood, knighthood, brotherhood. Sometimes it is written, chiefly in obsolete words, in the form - head.

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.

from three to six years, devised by Dr. Maria Montessori while teaching in the "Houses of Childhood" (schools in the poorest tenement districts of Rome, Italy), and first fully described by her in 1909. Leading features are freedom for physical activity (no stationary desks and chairs), informal and individual instruct…

bias; -- generally, but not always, used in a favorable sense; as, the prepossessions of childhood. "The prejudices and prepossessions of the country." Sir W. Scott.

to think of again; to recollect; as, I remember the fact; he remembers the events of his childhood; I cannot remember dates. We are said to remember anithing, when the idea of it ariseI. Watts.

ve; intermittent; as, spasmodic zeal or industry. Spasmodic croup (Med.), an affection of childhood characterized by a stoppage of brathing developed suddenly and without fever, and produced by spasmodic contraction of the vocal cords. It is sometimes fatal. Called also laryngismus stridulus, and childcrowing. -- Spas…

protecting; guardianship; protection; as, the king's right of seigniory and tutelage. The childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. Macaulay.

The part of life that succeeds to childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood. He wondered that your lordship Would suffer him to spend his youth at home. Shak. Those who pass their youth in vice are justly condemned…