The state, condition, or rank of being a baby; infancy or the period of being a dependent infant.
From 'baby' plus '-ship' (Old English '-scipe'), a suffix creating abstract nouns for states or conditions. This follows patterns like 'friendship,' 'kinship,' and 'leadership.'
The '-ship' suffix is one of Old English's most productive—it literally means 'condition' and we've been stacking it onto words for over 1,000 years to name every social position and state imaginable.
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