babeship

English

Etymology

From babe +‎ -ship.

Noun

babeship (plural babeships)

1. (archaic) Infancy; babyhood.
   • 1564 February, Erasmus, “The Saiynges of Philippus Kyng of Macedonie”, in Nicolas Udall [i.e., Nicholas Udall], transl., Apophthegmes, that is to Saie, Prompte, Quicke, Wittie and Sentẽcious Saiynges, […], London: […] Ihon Kingston, →OCLC, book II, folio 124, verso, paragraph 22:

     Neither was he aſhamed to confeſſe that he had through errour doen amyſſe in many thinges, by reaſon that he had not euen from his tendre babeſhip ben nouſled in the preceptes of philoſophie.

   • 1863, The Works of Thomas Goodwin - Volume 7, page 501:

     New converts in Christ, though men grown, are not young men in Christ presently the first hour, and there is a middle age besides to be passed through ere they come to be fathers; and thence all that time between those two, of babeship in Christ and old age in Christ, must be understood and meant by what is translated young men, comprising and taking also in that which answers to what in nature we call middle age, even all that time from babeship, till old age in Christianity comes, as a time of more usual conflict and fighting against lusts (which are the bloody battles);

   • 1877, Robert Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, page 428:

     Thus have I followed Christ from his babeship or infancy, to his grave of mortality, running through the life form, in a bare knowledge of Christ after the flesh, till I expired with him into his death, and was sealed up in the grave of most dark and somnolent retires for a season.

2. (archaic, with "my", "his", "her", or (plural) "their" or "our") A baby.
   • 1838, George Home, Memoirs of an Aristocrat, and Reminiscences of the Emperor Napoleon:

     Saturn, for instance, is at least half a dozen times bigger than this world; is it not, then, natural to think, that if inhabited by rational beings, by "lords of the creation," as we pigmies style ourselves, that they should be six times bigger than us? therefore, a new born infant of a lady of Saturn, must be equal in size to our most stately full-grown gentlemen, and his babeship of six feet will be dandled about with the same ease by his lady-mother of thirty-six feet high , as one of our fair belles would handle the first product of her tender love, when the small he or she does not exceed eighteen inches.

   • 1899, “Morningside”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 4, page 242:

     It was toward evening of that warm, August afternoon that the farmer, passing, spied my babeship, as bare as cupid, perched there in the hay.