¹infant

To the parent of a crying infant unable to say what the problem is, the etymology of infant might seem very appropriate. In Latin the adjective infans literally meant “not speaking, incapable of speech.” The noun infans referred to a very young child who had not yet learned to talk. Later, however, the scope of infans was broadened to include any child, no matter how talkative. When the word was adopted from Latin into French, and then into English, the broader usage was carried over also. Over time, English went back to the earlier Latin sense, restricting infant to a child still young enough to be called a baby.