Dictionary

bantling en · NOUN

Etymology

Uncertain. Perhaps from band(s) (“swaddling clothes”) + -ling, or a modification of German Bänkling (“bastard-child”), equivalent to bench + -ling.

Meanings

1. (UK, archaic, dialectal) An infant or young child.
   • "As if he'd let a cow-handed bantling like you handle them," Cecily muttered. "Children!" Meredyth protested, her face flushing. "What must Lord Englemere think, to hear you brangle so?" 1999, The Wedding Gamble, page 104:
   • "You!--half-grown, venison-hunting bantling!..." 1841, James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer:
   • And I even question whether any tender virgin, who was accidentally and unaccountably enriched with a bantling, would save her character at parlour fire-sides and evening tea-parties, by ascribing the phenomenon to a swan, a shower of gold, or a river god. 1809, Washington Irving (as Dietrich Knickerbocker), A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty:
2. (archaic) A bastard-child.
3. (archaic, derogatory) A brat.

Forms

Synonyms

infant · babe