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Infantile   Listen
adjective
Infantile  adj.  Of or pertaining to infancy, or to an infant; similar to, or characteristic of, an infant; childish; as, infantile behavior.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Infantile" Quotes from Famous Books



... Andrea delight to lead me through ROME, and to read the Eternal City unto me, as a book; and then fell upon me, in that most sacred place, a portion of divine enthusiasm, of holy inspiration, until, in a retrospect of the thoughts, feelings, schemes, and aspirations of that infantile era, freely could I weep, and ask myself, were such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... it was to learn the chants that he hummed from old manuscripts and missals, and it was the contrapuntal fancies of the Elizabethan composers that he gave her to play on the virginal, or the preludes of Bach on the clavichord. Her infantile graces at these instruments were the delight and amazement of her parents. She warbled this old-time music as other children do the vulgar songs of the hour; she seemed less anxious to learn the operatic music which ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... which used always to stand in Mrs. Maverick's little bed-room, and which had looked wonderfully attractive to her childish eyes on account of a flowered red and green paper with which it was covered. Once, overcome with infantile curiosity, she had tried to open it, and had received a severe whipping therefor. She could remember it very distinctly now, a box about eighteen inches square, with no fastening, but always securely tied with a stout cord. Late years it had been removed to the little ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... again with new interest at the daughter: but she disappointed him. She was too dainty, too petite, with a pink-and-white Dresden prettiness that was almost insignificant. (He missed, as people often did, the shrewd gray gleam behind those infantile lashes.) He hoped that the second daughter ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... they have been able to consider the social evil from an altogether new point of view. Certain very ugly facts, which touch the home and which intimately concern motherhood and the welfare of children, were brought forth—facts concerning infantile blindness, almost one-third of which is caused by excesses on the part of the fathers; facts concerning certain forms of ill health in married women, and the increase of sterility due to the spread ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... dwarf evergreens, of baloot, arbutus, etc., then over eminences with tall fragrant pines, and the evening breeze sighing among their branches, such as I had only once heard since leaving Scotland, and that was in the Lebanon. Old stumps and half trunks of large trees standing among myriads of infantile sprouts of pines attested the devastation that was going on, by means of the peasantry, for making of charcoal, and for supplying logs to the furnaces of Hebron, where very rude manufactures of glass are ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... affection had existed from their very childhood between Henri Merville and Louise Courtin; their respective parents were near neighbours, and on very friendly terms with one another; they, therefore, watched the infantile attachment of their children with great pleasure, and with still more self-congratulation did they perceive that, growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength, it had ripened into an ardent and deep-rooted passion. When Henri, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... and women may contract to marry is difficult to determine. But if we are, as far as possible, to put women on an equality with men, if we are to insist upon a universally educated population, and if we are seeking to reduce the infantile death-rate to zero, it must be much higher than it is in any terrestrial State. The woman should be at least one-and-twenty; the man ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... struggling voice in reply The word reached every ear, and it caused a general and breathless attention. The sound was soft and low, perhaps infantile, but it was uttered ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... history of civilized man, a few thousand at the most. Therefore it is not surprising that the primitive outlook should have bitten hard into the plastic stuff of the developing psyche, and forms still the infantile foundation of our mental life. Finally, there is the rational life, so far as the rational is yet achieved by us; correcting, conflicting with, and seeking to refine and control the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... indulged in one of his ghastly smiles. In repose his features had a curious character of evil, exhausted austerity; but when he smiled, the whole mask took on an unpleasantly infantile expression. A recrudescence of the rolling thunder invaded the room ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... In the state of innocence man would have been born, yet not subject to corruption. Therefore in that state there could have been certain infantile defects which result from birth; but not senile defects ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... of Mr. Westmacott's boys or genii, are something between that of Fiamingo, and real life. Those of Summer and Autumn especially, possess much of infantile grace; but the genius of Winter appears disproportionably small, and the space left for his chest so small, when compared with his limbs, that the Hibernian punsters will be in some danger of thinking ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... indeed!' said Crozer, for among this infantile army of spies and messengers, the fame of Crozer had gone forth and was resented by his rivals. And with ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Yet when he began to turn matters over in his head after he had reached his quarters, he could not remember a time when Patsy had not tyrannized over him, trampled him under foot, and variously abused him, even from the time of their infantile plays with sand castles and sea-shells built, architected, and ornamented on the seashore between the Black Head and the estuary of ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... and vulgar passions, such as had been used a thousand times over in literature. They were fitted for the new reading public for this reason; the constant repetition of the same characters, events, scenes, plots, gave their infantile minds the pleasure which children find in having a story told over and over in exactly the same terms. The new reading public would rebel against any ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... ran, she heard loud noises of infantile jubilation, and re-entering the kitchen, was amazed to see the soutar's hands moving as persistently if not quite so rapidly as before: the child hung at the back of the soutar's head, in the bight of ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... see what you get! You will think of it again when you come home and find that the butcher delivered your twenty-five cents' worth of cooked ham in your absence, and, finding the door locked, passed it through the keyhole. And yet the prodigality of the Indian and the caribou-killer are infantile compared with the big extravagances that go on without much comment. Economy is a broad term used to express the many ways in which other people might save money. Members of Parliament have been known to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... entertainment. Drama was therefore the main current of artistic production, the prose novel being quite a minor, almost an insignificant, tributary. Realising then the inevitable limitations which surrounded our English fiction at its birth we can understand its infantile imperfections and the subsequent arrest of ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... familiarise myself with their distinguishing traits; to listen to them in their petulance and anger, and in that sobbing subsidence to even temper; to their complacent gurglings and sleepy murmurs. One—and the most Infantile of all—not of the Family, has a distinctive note, a copyright tone which none imitates, and which becomes at times a sonorous swelling boom, a lofty recitative, for even an island has its ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them. One old gentleman had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between. Suddenly he choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "Frankly, I cannot see how Captain Strong can ignore this meeting to hold hands with those infantile cadets." ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell

... the least flicker of an innocent self-laudatory smile invested his round face with an infantile expression. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... not to be saying anything at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... father, with outflung arms and a scream of terror, when, instead of the fair, blooming face of his mother with the auburn waves of hair, the sallow cheeks, the tossed black hair, the great dark eyes of Mrs Butt met his infantile gaze. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... wasn't the artistic crowd usual at Thalvan Dras' dinners; most of the guests seemed to be business or political people. Thalvan Dras had gotten Vall and Dalla into the small group around him, along with pudgy, infantile-faced Brogoth Zaln, his confidential secretary, and ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... comment—it shaped itself into a question, or rather into two questions—gave Nurse Branscome a shock: it was so infantile in comparison with ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... he heard a pretty little infantile chorus. "How do you do, uncle?" said girls number two and three, while the dancing baby in the arms of the bobbing nurse babbled a welcome. Alfred looked up for a while at his uncle in the white trousers, and then instantly proposed ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... "mixed up," as poor little Allie had said, that, even with the aid of the rejected slate, it would, I believe, have lain beyond the powers of the most accomplished arithmetician to solve. No wonder that it had puzzled Allie's infantile brains. To recall and set it down here, at this length of time, would be quite impossible; nor would the reader care to have it inflicted upon him. Days, weeks, and years, peanuts, pence, and dollars, were involved in the statement he made, or attempted to make, for me to work out ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... only it was the operating theatre. The patient on this occasion was a doll, the surgeon a lad of seven, himself a victim of infantile paralysis, and the head nurse assisting was aged nine, and wears a brace on each leg. The stage was the children's ward of the hospital. Here are several pathetic little people, orthopedic cases, brought in for treatment ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... he looks, already! Almost more serious than today. Certainly if Luce dared to look (and just here she does dare) in order to make comparisons with the Pierre of today, she would see in his eyes an expression of joy and infantile gayety that does not appear in the infant: for the eyes of this infant, this little bourgeois under a bell glass, are birds in a cage that lack sunlight; and the sunlight has come, hasn't ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... child grew and waxed strong in spirit," [17:1] and that He "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man;" [17:2] but they do not minutely trace the progress of His mental development, neither do they gratify any feeling of mere curiosity by giving us His infantile biography. In what is omitted by the penmen of the New Testament, as well as in what is written we must acknowledge the guidance of inspiration; and though we might have perused with avidity a description of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... DOWIE: (Violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... don't you love the tender little darling babes that hang on your parental bosoms? (amen!)—Yes! I know you do—(amen! amen!)—Yes, I know, I know it.—(Amen, amen! hallelujah!) Now don't it make your parental hearts throb with anguish to think those dear infantile darlings might some day be out burning brush and fall into the flames and be burned to death! (deep groans.)—Yes, it does, it does! But oh! sisters, oh! mothers! how can you think your babes mightn't get ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... under the shape of Duty. Yet when prolonged beyond the age of childhood they tend to become a clog on development, and a hindrance to a wholesome life. The child who cherishes such emotion is likely to suffer infantile arrest of development, and the parent who is so selfish as to continue to expend such tenderness on a child who has passed the age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of a ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... the child's letter. But, unfortunately, what with his real emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it extravagantly, and interpolated a child's lisp (on no authority whatever), and a simulated infantile delivery, which, I fear, at first provoked the smiles rather than the tears of his audience. Nevertheless, at its conclusion the little note was handed round the party, and then there was a moment of ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... mother! That was the last sweet infantile caress your child was ever destined to give you! Treasure it up in joy and sorrow, in sunshine and gloom, for long, long years will pass before you press him to your ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... creed-bound minds, they take no root. Recognition of facts and honest deductions are not natural to the human mind. As far as religious matters are concerned, the vast majority of men have not reached a mental maturity; they are still in the infantile state where they have not as yet learned that the sequences of events are not to be interrupted by their desires. The easier path lies in the giving way to the unstable emotions. The primitive instincts are for emotion and for loose ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... Its victims, with grim humor, call it "tenant-house rot." Or, as a legislative report puts it: "Here infantile life unfolds its bud, but perishes before its first anniversary. Here youth is ugly with loathsome disease, and the deformities ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... the oval face, and the fine, sensitive mouth and thought of the youth's claim to the crime battered sobriquet of The Oskaloosa Kid. The man wondered if the mystery of the clanking chain would prove as harmlessly infantile as these two whom some accident of hilarious fate had cast in the ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a large, dark, oak-paneled room, with a dark carpet on the floor and dark-green curtains on the windows and the bedstead. Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of a most beautiful black-haired and black-eyed girl of about fourteen years of age, but upon whose infantile brow fell the shadow of some fearful woe. There was something awful in the despair "on that face so young" that bound the gazer in an irresistible and most painful spell. And Capitola remained standing before it transfixed, until the striking of the hall clock aroused ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... awe, what infantile impatience, We eyed the artifice when issued out, And racked our brains about the Regulations, And tried to think we had them free from doubt! As Rome's old Fathers, reverently leaning In secret cellars o'er the Sibyl's strain, Beyond the fact that several pars Had something vague ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... nourishment and when he desired repose. He also knew his mother, knew her mystically and knew her greedily, with knowledge which seemed of God, and with an awareness whose parent was perhaps a vital appetite. At other people he gazed and bubbled but with a certain infantile detachment, though his nurse, of course, declared that she had never known a baby to take such intelligent notice of all created things in its neighborhood. "He knows," she asseverated, with the air of one versed in mysteries, "he knows, does little master, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... If he knew her, he knew also himself. The affair was over. He was in despair. His mind went round and round like a life-prisoner exercising in an enclosed yard. No escape! Till then, he had always believed in his luck. Infantile delusion! He was now aware that destiny had struck him a blow once for all. But of course he did not perceive that he was too young, not ripe, for such a blow. The mark of destiny was on his features, and it was out of place there.... He had lost Marguerite. And what had he ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... wondering to think how far away from her now was this scene of her old life, but feeling no pain in the sight of it,—only a kind indulgence for the foolish simplicity which had taken so much pride in all these infantile elements of living. She went to the little Italian cabinet which stood against the wall, feeling now at least that she could do as she would,—that here there was no blank of human unconsciousness to stand in her way. But she was met by something ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... infant, these hereditary tendencies to weakness and disease and their corresponding signs in the iris become more and more pronounced, proceeding through the various stages of incumbrance from acute, infantile diseases through chronic catarrhal conditions ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... same. By the mere fact that they are going out first Mr. Grierson and Mr. Foster have suddenly become dear and sacred. Their lives, their persons, their very clothes—Dr. Bird's cheerful face, which is so like an overgrown cherub's, his blond, gold lock of infantile hair, Mr. Grierson's pale eyes that foresee danger, his not too well fitting khaki coat—have acquired suddenly a priceless value, the value of things long seen and long admired. It is as if I had known them all my life; as if life ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... the idea is suggested," said the stranger, with infantile intellectuality, "does ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... affected, often at about the same age, by the same peculiar disease, not known to have previously occurred in the family. He specifies the occurrence of diabetes in three brothers under ten years old; he also remarks that children of the same family often exhibit in common infantile diseases the same peculiar symptoms. My father mentioned to me the case of four brothers who died between the ages of sixty and seventy, in the same highly peculiar comatose state. An instance has ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... without a shadow of reserve, forgetting self, unashamed of any inferiority which his mind might show in comparison with hers, unafraid of giving offense to that sweet and well-poised nature—to look upon her face, almost infantile in its ingenuous expression, yet with indomitable strength in the clear grey eyes which revealed the soul within—to live with her ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early temperament passes, by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence of the infantile features, into the temperament of the boy proper; though there are also cases where the predaceous futures of boy life do not emerge at all, or at the most emerge in but a slight and ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... hot summer had been hard for nine-year-old Jimmie and the baby. They drooped like flowers in baked ground. Since Jimmie's infantile paralysis, three years before, he had been able to walk very little, and school had seemed out of the question. Unable to read or to run and play, ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... to the beginning of operations, I clambered up on to the ledge. Ferns grew among decaying vegetable matter in masses difficult to push through. Polypodiums with brown, oak-leaf like, infantile fronds clung tightly to the rocks with furry fingers, and the birds'-nests were big enough to conceal a man. A broad and comfortable path it was, leading directly under the crystal, and with haste and confidence ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... in his large brown eyes. Was he not in his native wilds? Was he not the son of a noted brave? Was he going to submit to the disgrace of losing his way; and, what was much worse, losing his feast? Certainly not! With stern resolve on every lineament of his infantile visage he changed his direction, and pushed on. We need scarcely add that he soon stopped again; resolved and re-resolved to succeed, and changed his direction again and again till he became utterly bewildered, and, finally, sitting down on the trunk of a fallen tree, shut ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... playing a thousand interesting tricks. He approached softly under cover of the bushes and prepared to fire on the unsuspecting creatures, but a nearer approach discovered to him such a similitude betwixt their gestures and the infantile caresses of his own children that he threw aside his gun. This gentleman's feelings are to be envied but few traders in fur would have acted so feelingly. The muskrat frequently inhabits the same lodge with the beaver and the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... families, were encouraged early in life to learn how to give orders and to exact obedience and to rule: when they grew up they would have many under them: and not to reign was to be ruined. So that the infantile autocrat Gabriella was being instructed in this way and in that way by the powerful, strong-minded, efficient grandmother as a tender old lioness might train a cub for the mastering of its dangerous world. She recalled these twilight drives when ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... young child. The doctor decided at last that there was some pressure of bone on the brain, and that operations quite beyond his skill would be required. At his suggestion a purse was made up among the mill hands and the Settlement folk, and MacPhairrson, smiling with infantile enjoyment, was packed off down river on the little tri-weekly steamer to the hospital ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... suspicious glance. Through his not very keen sensibilities there had penetrated the suspicion that the small person in the white frock was daring to smile at him and amuse herself at his expense; but his suspicion died at once before the glance of infantile sweetness which met his own. Pretty little thing! there was something marvellously taking in her appearance. For one moment, as she had spoken of inferior station, he had had an uneasy fear lest he had made the acquaintance of some vulgar upstart, with whom he could ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... that she much preferred the friendly proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby's impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated herself with a beaming countenance ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... these historical causes and the assigned causes. These need not, however, lead us to take a cynical view of history as many sociologists and students of politics do. We have as yet no organized world in which moral principle can operate. The world, we might say, is still infantile or immature. The world is still unmoral. We cannot say that nationalism as the principle of the conduct of nations is a wholly selfish principle as contrasted with a moral or altruistic motive, since such an analogy with individual ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... blew soft as on a summer morning. A land-bird flew into the ship. To-day the wind has veered round, but the weather continues charming. The sea is covered with multitudes of small flying-fish. An infantile water-spout appeared, and died in its birth. Mr. ——-, the consul, has been giving me an account of the agreeable society in the Sandwich Islands! A magnificent sunset, the sight of which compensates for all the inconveniences of the voyage. The sky was covered with black clouds ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... children appear frequently, and not unfavorably, on the pages of this singular diary. Thus, when the Dauphin was three years old, the king, being in bed, took him and a young Frontenac of about the same age, set them before him, and amused Himself by making them rally each other in their infantile language. The infant Frontenac had a trick of stuttering, which the Dauphin caught from him, and retained for a long time. Again, at the age of five, the Dauphin, armed with a little gun, played at soldier with two of the Frontenac ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... her arms for this ravishing creature in a French gown, looked into its countenance of unflinching infantile grace and amiability and innocence, and her fickle heart betrayed her, and she laughed with delight, and the tension of anxiety ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... profession was in the hands of women, to which we may attribute that country's almost entire exemption from infantile diseases, a fact which recent discoveries fully authenticate. The enormous death-rate of young children in modern civilized countries may be traced to woman's general enforced ignorance of the laws ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... individual, and profoundly attached to his ideas, like all Anglo-Saxons, and in fact like all who have acquired the Protestant habit of free inquiry, he nevertheless had for the Church a docility almost naive and infantile; and this was because he recognized in her the authority and the action of the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... nursery should have had the instinct to foresee, but the young man on the edge of life never dreamed. What motives or emotions drove his masters on their various paths he made no pretence of guessing; even at that age he preferred to admit his dislike for guessing motives; he knew only his own infantile ignorance, before which he stood amazed, and his innocent good-faith, always matter of simple-minded surprise. Critics who know ultimate truth will pronounce judgment on history; all that Henry Adams ever saw in man was a reflection of his own ignorance, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... experimentalised upon our Judy, and find it answer to a miracle. Mrs. Johnson may shut up her laboratory for American Soothing Syrup; mesmerism is the only panacea for those morning and evening infantile ebullitions which affectionate mammas always assign to the teeth, the wind, or a pain in the stomach, and never to that possible cause, a pain in the temper. Mesmerism is "the real blessing to mothers," and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... gold and silver plate, and arranging splendid pageants for her, were not the only plans for her aggrandizement which were formed during the period of her infantile unconsciousness. The king, her father, first had an act of Parliament passed, solemnly recognizing and confirming her claim as heir to the crown, and the title of Princess of Wales was formally conferred upon her. When these things were done, Henry began to ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... a great success, Jeremiah." Ronny continued to laugh as Jerry performed an infantile solo with a white celluloid rattle. "Where is Marjorie? I asked you ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... the game," replied Sarah Judd, with a shrug. "You don't know me, Nan, but I know you; and I know your record, too. You're as slick as they make 'em, and the one who calls herself Agatha Lord is just an infantile amateur beside you. But go ahead, Nan; don't ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... custom, if not the value, of throwing slippers, rice, etc. after a newly-wedded pair; and the ceremony of breaking a cake over a bride's head as she first enters her husband's house is not forgotten. Who has not eaten the "child's cheese," and been forbidden to depart from the infantile home before drinking the young one's health, on every occasion the nursery was entered before the christening. Maidens dream, as often as they have the chance, on "children's cheese" and brides' cakes, in order to obtain glimpses in their ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... happen to like his style; but he did. To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the griffin of a mediaeval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... Inexplicable neklarigebla. Inexpressible neesprimebla. Inextricable nemalplektebla. Infallible neerarebla. Infallibility neerarebleco. Infallibly neerareble. Infamous malglora, malfama. Infamy malgloro, malfamo. Infancy infaneco. Infant infaneto. Infantile infana. Infantry infanterio. Infatuation delogiteco. Infect infekti. Infelicity malfelicxeco. Infer impliki. Inferior, an subulo. Inferior malsupera. Inferiority malsupereco. Infernal infera. Infidelity ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... extended view, nebulae and luminous stars are but the infantile and adolescent stages of the life history of the cosmic individual; the dark star, its adult stage, or time of true virility. Or we may think of the shrunken dark star as the germ-cell, the pollen-grain, of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... saw thee shine when life with me was young, And fresh as fleet-winged time's infantile hour, When Hope her treacherous chaplet 'round me flung, And daily twined ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... perfect freedom of speech and intuitive understanding that lie at the root of all true and deep affection. His delicacy of appearance, his stunted stature, his invalid requisitions, nay, his very deformity, for his twisted limb amounted to this, put aside all thought of infantile flirtation (for we know that, strange as it may seem, such a thing does exist) from the first hour of our acquaintance. He always seemed to me much younger than he was, or than I was—as boys, even ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... the bold vi-queen become, that before many days the baby-lord became passionately attached to her, and ceased to ask for his nurse and parents. And he, with all his endearing, infantile ways, was such brave, grand little fellow—a child so after her own heart—that Grace, who, in her pride and independence, had never envied anybody any thing, not even Elizabeth her crown—envied the stout ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... cloaks, give one (said our Lord) to the poor; In such bounty as that lies the trial: But a child that gives half of its infantile store Has small praise, because ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... several millions of eggs in conger-eels and some other fishes. These illustrate the spawning method of solving the problem of survival. Some animals are naturally prolific, and the number of eggs which they sow broadcast in the waters allows for enormous infantile mortality and obviates ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... man is identical with immortal man, and that the immortal is inside the mortal; that good and evil blend; that matter and Spirit are one; and that Soul, or Spirit, is subdivided into spirits, or souls,—alias gods. This infantile talk about Mind-healing is no more identical with Christian Science than the babe is identical with the adult, or the human belief resembles the divine idea. Hence it is impossible for those holding such material and mortal ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... of the boy, his eccentric ways, his quickness in learning, and his infantile simplicity had all conspired to win the affection of Jack, so that he would have protected him even without the solicitation of Susan Lanham. But since Susan had been Jack's own first and fast friend, he felt in honor bound to run all risks in the ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... an enigma again. But yours is not the creed of a simpleton. You are playing with me—revealing your wisdom from beneath a veil of infantile guilelessness. I have no more ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... she shrugged her shoulders at Aida for being too old, Christine did the same at Alice for being too young. Alice was truly a girl—probably not more than seventeen. Her pert, pretty, infantile face was an outrage against the code. She was a mere amateur, with everything to learn, absurdly presuming upon the very quality which would vanish first. And she was a fool. She obviously had no sense, not even the beginnings of sense. She was wearing an impudently expensive ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising this stern though beneficent discipline, it soon becomes extremely careful not to transgress. These general truths hold throughout adult life as well as throughout infantile life. If further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our various ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... God, foolish, desperate, infantile promises; trying to placate Him in His might with my resolutions for better things, trying to strike bargains, at the last moment, with the Master of Life and Death—even protesting that I'd forgive Dinky-Dunk for anything and everything he might have done, and that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... so-called Negritos. It is not known how far they represent a distinct and perhaps earlier experiment in negro-making, though this is the prevailing view; or whether the negro type, with its tendency to infantile characters due to the early closing of the cranial sutures, is apt to throw off dwarfed forms in an occasional way. At any rate, in Africa there are several groups of pygmies in the Congo region, as well as the Bushmen and allied stocks in South Africa. Then the Andaman Islanders, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... otherwise. They were but just rescued from heathenism, and we need not wonder if their spirits long bore the scars of their former bondage. If we wish to know what the apostolic churches were like, we have but to look at the communities gathered by modern missionaries. The same infantile simplicity, the same partial apprehensions of the truth, the same danger of being led astray by the low morality of their heathen kindred, the same openness to strange heresy, the same danger of blending ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... social system. In a book which serves as the philosophical testament of the century,[3242] Condorcet declares that this method is the "final step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier between humanity and its ancient infantile errors." "By applying it to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences. With its help we have been able to discover the rights of man." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... tiny well-gloved hand was outstretched in greeting, while the other pressed a thick, green-covered volume against her side. Her decision and quick, tactful manner bespoke the mature woman of the world; but her upraised face had preserved a girlish and even infantile expression of innocence in its large, fearless, grey eyes, and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs. O'James was a widow, and she was two-and-thirty years of age; but neither fact could have been deduced from ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stridor is produced by an exaggeration of the infantile type of larynx. The epiglottis will be found long and tapering, its lateral margins rolled backward so as to meet and form a cylinder above. The upper edges of the aryepiglottic folds are approximated, leaving a narrow chink. The lack of firmness in these folds and the loose tissue in ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... and beat the winds afar. There sing more poets in that one small isle Than all isles else can show—of such you are; Remote things come to you unsought erewhile, Near things a long way round as by a star. Wild dreams!' He laughed, 'A sage right infantile; With sacred fear behold life's waste deplored, Undaunted by the leisure of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... charming in her supposed role; their fellow-passengers' criticisms were exceedingly favorable. Even the young imp who had pronounced them B. and G. with infantile unreserve appeared to be impressed by her fresh, young beauty; and an old clergyman across the aisle beamed on them at intervals, and every beam was ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... understood, conveys the gist of long and delicate explanations; and where the life is known even YEA and NAY become luminous. In the closest of all relations—that of a love well founded and equally shared-speech is half discarded, like a roundabout, infantile process or a ceremony of formal etiquette; and the two communicate directly by their presences, and with few looks and fewer words contrive to share their good and evil and uphold each ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gave to the people. This was his power and his weakness; it was his beauty. He believed in glory. He had of life and of the world the same opinion as any one of his grenadiers. He retained always the infantile gravity which finds pleasure in playing with swords and drums, and the sort of innocence which makes good military men. He esteemed force sincerely. He was a man among men, the flesh of human flesh. He had not a thought that was not in action, and all his actions were grand yet ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the infantile childishness of a Provencal Christmas. He never saw anything prettier in his life, he said, than a Noel procession on the coast of the Mediterranean. A beautiful young woman and an equally lovely child sat on a donkey, which an old fisherman in a flowing ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes and trickled down ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... journey she was sitting by the child's couch to enjoy the sight of him as much as possible. Wholly absorbed in gazing at his infantile grace and patrician beauty, she did not hear the door open, and started in terror at the sound of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... her voice, and, bursting into tears, she threw-herself into Mrs. Willoughby's arms, and sobbed like a child. The mother now motioned to her son to quit the room, while she remained herself to soothe the weeping girl, as she so often had done before, when overcome by her infantile, or youthful griefs. Throughout this interview, habit and single-heartedness so exercised their influence, that the excellent matron did not, in the most remote manner, recollect that her son and Maud were not ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... of delighting as formerly in her infantile ways, appeared to avoid them, she gave orders she was not to be brought to her bed in the morning as usual. When they met on the stairs, she passed by without looking at her. At the most she would go up to her and say ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... it seems a natural infirmity. I have known people who seemed to have been born liars. The falsehoods of their lives extended from cradle to grave. Prevarication, misrepresentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared in their first utterances and was as natural to them as any of their infantile diseases, and was a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. But many have been placed in circumstances where this tendency has day by day, and hour by hour, been called to larger development. They have gone from attainment to attainment, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... oldest Palaeotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... as the child was beginning to smile, and to express an approbation of life by murmurous gurglings, an infantile disease gripped it, held it, would not release it. And Winifred knelt beside it, dead, and thought, with a new and vital horror, of the invalid world playing cards upon the drawn coverlet of its bed. Baby was outside that chamber ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... immemorial rights? And Ferdinand, the young monarch of whom so little was known and so much expected,—he, too, a voluntary prisoner, while a Frenchman reigned in Madrid? This was news, indeed, to bewilder nations who had hitherto remained content in infantile tutelage, unconscious, undesirous, of the rights of men! Addresses, fervent with loyalty, were dispatched to Spain, embodying vows of eternal affection towards the King, and of detestation of Joseph, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... real wealth of melody. The value of these melodies, their distinction, their novelty, and charm, can be very well contested; it is not for me to appraise them. But to deny their existence is either bad faith or stupidity; only as these melodies are often of very large dimensions, infantile and short-sighted minds do not clearly distinguish their form; or else they are wedded to other secondary melodies which veil their outlines from those same infantile minds; or, upon the whole, these melodies are so dissimilar to the little ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... that fellow. Did you ever see so wonderfully cunning a smile? And in the morning I am to give him a draft on Rimmle! Sometimes I think there must be something infantile about me, strangers do pick me up for such an innocent at times. But in the morning, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... of Hannah Achsah Stillwell which she was hed nurse in the family of Howard Neville eskire for years and brung up mostly by hand his children and never felt she done enuf for them not sparin herself with infantile elements walkin nites and the like, pashunt and gentle not cross-grained like some which the poor little things they can't help theirselves teethin and the like, respeckful to her betters knoin her place, kind to them beneth her—which she was much thort ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... in the habit of driving him in a baby carriage to the Queen's Park for an airing, and one afternoon the mother lay in wait for the appearance of the infantile equipage. She was afraid to approach the servant with a bribe, as, in the event of her refusal, the Wilkies would be placed on their guard, and would set a strict watch over all the child's movements. She accordingly sat down at a distance, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... To one of them Geoffrey owed his preservation. He would have struck his forehead against a low doorway in the darkness; but she touched the lintel with her finger and then laid her tiny hand on Barrington's tall shoulder, laughing and saying in infantile English: ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... tenderness peculiarly winning of the love of mothers and children, and I shall give the best notion of the poet's best in the following beautiful lullaby, premising merely that the title of the poem is the Italian infantile for sleep: ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... was the man who, beholding the grace Of that slight girlish creature, and watching her face With its infantile beauty and sweetness, would dare Think aught but the rarest of virtues dwelt there? Rare virtues she had, but in commonplace ones Which make happy husbands and home loving sons She was utterly lacking. ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally fall into their subordinate, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... completely as to induce the same helpless condition which is found in congenital cases. We dismiss now one distinction which has been drawn between idiocy and imbecility—that the former is, and that the latter is not, necessarily congenital; one arising from the supposition that infantile mental deficiency is less likely to be so grave an affection than that which has been present from the moment of existence. Besides, the term is constantly being applied in common parlance to those who, originally of sound mind, have in adult ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... of Revelation, which alone really elevate and purify the soul. In the absence of much information of a very positive kind in regard to such points of character and life, we instinctively revert in a case like this to the principles and maxims of an infantile and early training. Remembering the piety portrayed in the ancestors of this great man, one cannot but cling to the hope that his many virtues reposed on a substratum of more than merely moral excellence. Let us cherish the hope ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... bottom. He remembered seeing the bright, sparkling wavelets and never forgot the impression they produced. There was a boat at the bottom of the hill, and the wagon and horses were driven into the boat. A man and boy began propelling the long sweeps or oars. He watched the proceeding in infantile wonder and especially remembered how the water dropped in sparkling crystals from the oar blades. The boy had on a red cap or fez with a tassel. That boy, that cap and that oar with the sparkling dripping water from the blade were to him the brightest pictures and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... all kinds are less noticeable, less aggressive, than in this country, and the manners of the shopmen make you feel you are conferring a benefit instead of receiving one. Even their locomotives are less noisy than ours, having a shrill, infantile whistle that contrasts strongly with the loud, demoniac yell that makes a residence near a railway or a depot, in this country, so unbearable. The trains themselves move with wonderful smoothness and celerity, making a mere ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... picture. In the centre, upon its estrade, was the splendid cradle of the slumbering child, and all around, upon the steps of this child-throne, these soldiers with their wild and threatening faces, all eyes expectantly resting upon the smiling infantile brow. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... my thanks. But what can I do? My volume on The Millimetric Study of the Tail of the Greek Delta, in the MSS. of the Sixth Century, is entirely out of print; and until its re-issue by the Seaside Library I cannot forward a copy. Then my essay, "Infantile Diseases of the Earthworm" is in Berlin for translation, as it is to be issued at the same time in Germany and the United States. "The Moral Regeneration of the Rat," and "Intellectual Idiosyncracies of Twin Clams," are resting till I can get up ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... although I warmly protested against this sacrilege of art, she explained that it was by that system that Albert Duerer had been taught. This, of course, accounts for our having infant prodigies in art, as well as music and the drama. The rapidity with which Master Hoffmann was followed by infantile Lizsts and little Otto Hegner as soon as it became apparent that there was a demand for such phenomena, seems to indicate that in music at all events supply will follow demand as a matter of course, and if the infant artist can only be "crammed" in daubing on canvas as youthful ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... infected 'even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint' (which is not even a 'disease of language' of a respectable type), then 'the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.' Alas, I fear with justice! ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... instruction than the adult. As, of necessity, there was a first man, and a time when that first man began to be, so, of necessity, in the beginning of the life of that man, however perfectly developed his body might have been, his mind was infantile—destitute of the first principles of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various

... and sustain thee, too gentle Spenser! I never will desert thee. But what am I? Great they have called me! Alas, how powerless, then, and infantile is greatness ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... and words and discussion of normal instances, instead of by collection and observation of the unusual and irregular, and by experimental production of variety. If we think of a subject still in this infantile and almost pre-scientific stage, Bacon's words and formulae are far from inapplicable; they are, within their limitations, quite necessary and wholesome. A subject in this stage, strange to say, exists,—psychology; now hesitatingly beginning to assume its experimental ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... And as he leant upon the mantelpiece, his tall, splendid figure in its scarlet coat outlined against the bright blaze, his eye took in—perhaps for the first time—the immense number of portraits of himself which decorated this apartment—himself in every stage, from infantile days upward, through the toy rocking-horse period to the real dog companion—in Eton collars and Fourth of June hats—in cricketing flannels and Oxford Bullingdon groups—and then not so many, until one taken last year. How young it looked and smiling! There was one ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... between Florinda and her pen was something impassable. Fancy a butterfly, gnat, or other winged insect, attached to a twig which, clogged with mud, it rolls across a page. Her spelling was abominable. Her sentiments infantile. And for some reason when she wrote she declared her belief in God. Then there were crosses—tear stains; and the hand itself rambling and redeemed only by the fact—which always did redeem Florinda—by the fact that she cared. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf



Words linked to "Infantile" :   immature, infantile amaurotic idiocy, infantile fixation, young, infantile autism



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