Other forms: babies
A baby is a very young child, one who cannot yet walk or talk. A newborn baby, have a baby, the baby is asleep.
Infant is the formal and medical word; toddler comes next, once they walk. A baby is also the youngest in a family, whatever their age — she is the baby of the family — and the smallest of anything: baby carrots, a baby elephant. As an affectionate name for a partner it is very common in American English and in song lyrics. Note babysit and baby-faced, and throw the baby out with the bathwater, meaning to discard something good along with the bad.
1nounbabyA very young child who cannot yet walk or talk.~96%
“The baby slept through the entire flight.”
2nounyoungestThe youngest member of a family.~2%
“She is the baby of the family and forty-three.”
3adjectivesmallVery small of its kind.~2%
“Baby potatoes take about fifteen minutes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
baby is a very young child.
Also accepted in games: infant
Middle English baby is an imitation of the sounds babies make, like babble and the many b-words for infants across unrelated languages. It is one of the few English words invented by listening rather than inherited.
Middle English
baby
English, today
baby
Built from
From Middle English baby. From Middle English baby, babie (“baby”), a diminutive form of babe (“babe, baby”), equivalent to babe + y/-ie. Perhaps ultimately imitative of baby talk (compare babble).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA