| 1. | clothes consisting of long, narrow strips of cloth for swaddling an infant. |
| 2. | long garments for an infant. |
| 3. | the period of infancy or immaturity, as of a person, or incipience, as of a thing: Nuclear energy is still in its swaddling clothes. |
| 4. | rigid supervision or restriction of actions or movements, as of the immature: new nations that are freeing themselves of their swaddling clothes. |
