From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Infancy \In"fan*cy\, noun [L. infantia: cf. F. enfance. See {Infant}.]
1. 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.
2. The first age of anything; the beginning or early period of existence; as, the infancy of an art.
The infancy and the grandeur of Rome. --Arbuthnot.
3. (Law) The state or condition of one under age, or under the age of twenty-one years; nonage; minority.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: the early stage of growth or development [syn: {babyhood}, {early childhood}]
2: the earliest state of immaturity [syn: {babyhood}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
63 Moby Thesaurus words for "infancy": babyhood, beginnings, birth, callowness, childhood, commencement, cradle, dawn, dewiness, disability, disablement, disqualification, early, emergence, freshman year, freshness, genesis, greenness, imbecility, immaturity, inability, inadequacy, incapability, incapacitation, incapacity, inception, inchoation, incipience, incipiency, incompetence, incompetency, incunabula, inefficiency, ineptitude, inexperience, inferiority, initial, insufficiency, juiciness, juniority, juvenility, legal incapacity, minority, my Angel-infancy, nascence, nascency, nativity, nonage, origin, origination, parturition, pregnancy, rawness, rise, sappiness, stages, start, the nursery, undevelopment, unfitness, unripeness, wardship, youth
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
INFANCY, noun The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
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