noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act or process of infantilizing, treating a non-infant as an infant, or more generally treating an adult like a young child. countable, uncountable

   "Nursing homes lead to an infantilization of the elderly."

Antonyms

All antonyms

adultification

Example

More examples

"Nursing homes lead to an infantilization of the elderly."

Etymology

From infantilize + -ation.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.