ˈswaddling-clothes, n. pl.
[swaddling vbl. n.]
Clothes consisting of narrow lengths of bandage wrapped round a new-born infant's limbs to prevent free movement. Also transf. an infant's long-clothes. Now chiefly fig. or allusively in reference to the earliest period of the existence of a person or thing, when movement or action is restricted.
| α 1580 Hollyband Treas. Fr. Tong, Le Berceau d'vn enfant, les langes & petits drapeaux, a childes cradle, and swatheling clothes. 1596 Shakes. 1 Hen. IV, iii. ii. 112 (Qo.), This Hotspur Mars in swathling cloaths, This infant warrier. 1612 R. Carpenter Soule's Sent. 84 Some lie in their sinnes as children in their swathling cloathes. |
| β 1535 Coverdale Luke ii. 7 She brought forth hir first begotten sonne, & wrapped him in swadlinge clothes, and layed him in a maunger. 1579 W. Wilkinson Confut. Fam. Love 48 b, Miracles serued the Church in her swadlyng clothes. 1588 Greene Metamorph. Wks. (Grosart) IX. 52 How did fortune frowne that thou wert not stifled in thy swadling cloathes? 1599 Nashe Lenten Stuffe Ep. Ded., This Encomion of the king of fishes was predestinate to thee from thy swadling clothes. 1687 A. Lovell tr. Thevenot's Trav. i. 47 They take care that even their Sucking Children in Swadling Cloaths do not defile themselves. 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull ii. iii, A child in swaddling clothes. 1796 H. Hunter tr. St.-Pierre's Study Nat. (1799) III. 442 He was for many ages in swaddling clothes, begirt by the Druids with the bands of superstition. 1849 James Woodman ii, I have never seen him since I was in swaddling-clothes. 1861 Maine Anc. Law (1874) 26 To understand how society would ever have escaped from its swaddling-clothes. 1886 Hall Caine Son of Hagar i. viii, A great child just out of swaddling-clothes. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. II. 834 The efficacy of this treatment of snake-poisoning..seems then undoubted; but it is not yet in a position to put off the swaddling-clothes of the laboratory. |