The murder of infants or young children.
The act of killing an infant.
A person who kills an infant.
The killing of a baby. Historically, and still in a few cultures, many unwanted babies especially girls, infants of unacknowledged paternity, or babies with birth defects were simply abandoned, if not directly killed. Such abandonment is rare and rejected in most cultures today, but the term infanticide has more recently been applied with rhetorical emphasis to the killing of a fetus (more properly called feticide).
The deliberate act of causing the death of an infant during the initial year of life is commonly known as infanticide.