Word.ws English Dictionary

infantilise

infantilise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of infantilize.

Meaning of infantilize

Verb

infantilize (third-person singular simple present infantilizes, present participle infantilizing, simple past and past participle infantilized)

  1. (transitive) To reduce (an adult) to the state or status of an infant.
    • For too long, many of us have sought unity by binding ourselves together with the umbilical cords of dogma. They have done less and less to nurture us in recent years, and more and more to infantilize us.1984 August 18, Scott Tucker, “The Politics of Perversion”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 6, page 8
  2. (transitive) To treat (an adult) like a child.

Forms of infantilise

third-person singular presentinfantilises
present participleinfantilising
past participleinfantilised
pastinfantilised

Questions about infantilise

What is infantilise the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Infantilise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of infantilize.

Words near infantilise in the dictionary

  1. infantile dementia
  2. infantile paralysis
  3. infantilely
  4. infantileness
  5. infantilisation
  6. infantilise
  7. infantilised
  8. infantilises
  9. infantilising
  10. infantilism
  11. infantilisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: infantilise (page history and authors); infantilize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “infantilise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/infantilise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.