infantibus

Infantibus is a Latin grammatical form, not a standalone word in common English usage. It is the dative and ablative plural of the 3rd‑declension noun infans, infantis, meaning infant or very young child. In Latin sentences, infantibus can mean “to the infants,” “for the infants,” or, when used with a passive or with certain prepositions, “by/with the infants,” depending on the syntactic construction.

Etymology and form: Infans is a classical Latin noun whose sense centers on a very young child. The plural infans becomes infantis in the singular, while the plural forms include infantibus for both the dative and ablative cases. This pattern follows standard Latin noun declension, where the endings signal the function of the noun within a sentence rather than a fixed meaning.

Usage and context: In Latin texts, infantibus appears in contexts involving guardianship, gifts or duties directed to children, or descriptions that involve a group of infants as beneficiaries or participants. Because Latin often marks indirect objects with the dative, infantibus frequently functions as the recipient or beneficiary in clauses describing actions done for or to infants. It also occurs in liturgical, legal, and didactic writings where groups of infants are referenced.

Relation to related terms: The English word infant derives from Latin infans through later medieval stages, reflecting the same root concept of a very young child. The feminine or masculine gender of infans is not fixed in Latin; it refers to young children in general, with infantibus serving as the plural form in specific grammatical cases.

See also: infans, infancy, infant.