Which is older an infant or a baby?
Which is older an infant or a baby?
Is one a sub group of the other? Does either term include toddlers?
I'm having this discussion with someone and we both thought the opposite from eachother and we were quite sure our way of thinking was the common understanding.
They are vague terms used in different ways in different contexts. Infant is generally on the younger end closer to birth and baby stretched out up to multiple years by some usage.
Newborn > infant > toddler with the option to call them a baby during all three. A child around a year old might be called an infant, baby, or even toddler.
Then don't use baby again until they are in a relationship :P
The definition I've heard the most is: newborn (0-3 mo.), infant (3-12ish mo, toddler (from the time they start walking to between about 2-3 years). Technically, any of them could be considered a baby.
"Toddler" describes the action of toddling, or walking in an uncoordinated way.
Baby doesn't even have an age limit. A lot of my coworkers are HUGE babies if they don't get their way.
This is the correct answer. At some point paediatricians and other folks interested in child development standardised the meaning of infant as above but unless you're a paediatrician they are completely interchangeable.
Not to me. Infants are much younger than babies in my view
That toddler really threw me off. So my five year olds are not toddlers, just kids?
"Baby" comes from middle English.
"Infant" comes from French.
Like a lot of English there are two words for it due to the long French rule over England.
See also*
Blossom vs Flower
Fowl vs Poultry
And many more.
They are effectively synonymous
Often the French word ends up having more fancy, haughty, or high-class connotation and the the Anglo Saxon word ends up having more of a working person's connotation, since the Normans were the rulers of England and the Anglo Saxons their subjects. One popular example is that words like "Chicken", "Cow", "Sheep", "Pig" are the word for the animal, whereas the French "Beef", "Poultry", "Mutton", "Pork" are the words for their meat because the English were the farmers raising the animals but the French overlords were the ones eating their meat.
But because the words have been there for so long they’ve drifted into slightly different meanings, allowing more subtle communication.
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Blossom: the petals of a flower
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Flower: the whole flower (petals, stamen, stem, leaves)
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Fowl: birds you can eat, including alive in the wild
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Poultry: chicken, as farm animals, meat, or eggs
Wrong.
Blossom - noun a flower or a mass of flowers, especially on a tree or bush. "tiny white blossoms"
Hang your head in shame.
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Yeah I think this is the difference. I don't have a strong second language so I think of infants being only the earliest stage of life. They speak some french where enfant is older than a bébé.
Baby can be older than an infant but also includes infancy.
Infants and babies are the same. Some people will continue calling their child a baby long after it is no longer a baby though. I have never seen someone continue to call their child an infant. So of the two, infant is more precise. A baby or infant will progress to become a toddler.
My BaBy Is 72 MoNtHs!1!!
i don’t know the specifics, but i feel they’re just synonyms and they share the same age range they’d represent. in terms of subgroup, id say infant is a subgroup of child based on what i hear and say. Like i wouldn’t say i have an infant baby id just say baby. Or i don’t have a baby child, i have an infant child. 🤷♂️
I think a child up until about 18mos is a baby. A new born is an infant.
A baby is a baby until they're a toddler. An infant is a brand new baby.
There's not a specific difference in most cases. But generally infant can be used outside of humans whereas baby is specifically a human child. And in some professional and scientific jargon infant is used to describe a specific phase of life.