baby talk

baby talk

noun
1.
the speech of children learning to talk, marked by syntactic differences from adult speech and by phonetic modifications like lisping, lalling, omission and substitution of sounds, etc.
2.
a style of speech used by adults in addressing children, pets, or sweethearts, and formed in imitation of the voice and pronunciation of children learning to talk: it is generally characterized in English by the addition of diminutive endings to words, the use of special words and pet names, and the systematic distortion of certain words, as dolly for doll, teensy-weensy, oo for you, twain for train, etc.

Origin:
1830–40
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Baby talk is always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Collins
World English Dictionary
baby talk
 
n
1.  the speech of very young children learning to talk
2.  an adult's imitation of this

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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