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light infantry

light infantry noun: ground combat soldiers who are not mechanized, and whose role is to harass the enemy in front of the main body of infantry.

Noun

light infantry (countable and uncountable, plural light infantries)

  1. Ground combat soldiers who are not mechanized, and whose role is to harass the enemy in front of the main body of infantry.
  2. (archaic, slang) Bedbugs or fleas.
    • Our bed was a waterproof sheet on the bare stone-floors, and as the convent swarmed with fleas of all sizes, from the heavy dragoon down to the light infantry, there was no fear of a sentry sleeping on his post.1887, Andrew A. Anderson, Twenty-five Years in a Waggon in the Gold Regions of Africa, page 59
    • The affair began by a skirmishing of the fleas, who acted as cavalry; then came the main body of lice, followed by the light infantry of bedbugs, to the number of forty thousand.1906, Samuel Gridley Howe, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, page 109

Forms of light infantry

plurallight infantries

Questions about light infantry

What does light infantry mean?
Light infantry means ground combat soldiers who are not mechanized, and whose role is to harass the enemy in front of the main body of infantry.
What part of speech is light infantry?
Light infantry is a noun.
What is the plural of light infantry?
The plural of light infantry is light infantries.

Words near light infantry in the dictionary

  1. light in the loafers
  2. light in the sneakers
  3. light industries
  4. light industry
  5. light infantries
  6. light infantry
  7. light intensities
  8. light intensity
  9. light into
  10. light jockey
  11. light jockeys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: light infantry (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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