These words all refer to young human beings who are not yet adults. Child is the most inclusive word and has a wide, general application: when he was a child of three; trying to explain the meaning of death to a child ; the delighted cries of children playing in the surf. A child usually ranges in age from that of a small baby to a boy or girl entering puberty. Occasionally adults speak of adolescents as children : high-school children . Child also means an offspring or descendant of any age.

• Most young men want to marry and raise children ; Captain James Cook was the child of a Yorkshire farm labourer; The Jews are sometimes called the Children of Israel.

Baby and infant both designate a newborn or very young child who is still in arms. Baby is the everyday word, while infant tends to sound impersonal or medical. Baby has a more personal quality about it, and is richly connotative of endearment and affection. One would say that a woman is about to give birth to a baby or to a child , but it would sound stilted if she were said to be about to bear an infant . Baby is also the more general term, being used of the last born of two or more brothers or sisters or of the youngest member of a group: the baby of a large family; the baby of the graduating class. In civil law, an infant is a person who has not yet attained the age of legal majority, usually 21.

A toddler is a child between about the ages of one and two years, who is just emerging from infancy or babyhood . Toddler is a pleasant, homely word, vividly suggesting the short, unsteady steps taken by a child of this age in learning to walk.

Little boy and little girl are applied to young children generally between the ages of two and six when they are no longer babies but still regard their parents, rather than other children , as the centre of their world. Because son and daughter have become rather formal ?some even old-fashioned ?little boy or girl have probably become the commonest words parents use, especially in speech, to refer to children of this age. The little does not mean small ; small boy and small girl refer to size, whereas little boy and little girl refer to age, and must now be considered compounds with distinct meanings and connotations not conveyed by the parts of which they are composed.

Pre-schooler , a fairly recent term, is applied to a child between the ages of two and five years who is too young to enter a lower primary school but who may be attending a nursery school or kindergarten. Pre-schooler is often used in contradistinction to "school-age child " and has the ring of pedagogic jargon.

Youngster may refer to a child or adolescent of any age. It is used mainly by older people, and it carries a suggestion of the liveliness and vigour of youth rather than its helplessness or dependency. Hence, it is applied more frequently to a boy than a girl.