baby talk

noun

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Definition of baby talk

1a : the consciously imperfect or altered speech used by adults in speaking to small children

b : the syntactically imperfect speech or phonetically modified forms used by small children learning to talk

2 : oversimplified speech or writing

Examples of baby talk in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Basically, a kind of baby talk aimed at their pups to guide them towards adult bat language. — Mark Stratton, Scientific American, 3 Sep. 2021 The handyman Boyle traumatized with baby talk has an alibi, which is revealed to Jake via lullaby. — Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 19 Aug. 2021 Many of the kids who had stopped speaking in baby talk or sleeping in their parents’ beds, or had started going to the bathroom themselves, have regressed. — Annie Vainshtein, SFChronicle.com, 23 Aug. 2020 Think of Lewis Carroll’s forensic interest in nonsense, Gertrude Stein’s or Beckett’s experimentation with repetition and baby talk. — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 5 May 2020 In fact, sound designers made baby talk recordings and married the tones with a synthesizer to get R2-D2's nearly human sounds. — Aj Willingham, CNN, 21 Dec. 2019 Talk to her in a normal voice (no baby talk or raised voices), but don’t overdo it because too much talk can trigger submissive urination, too. — Cathy M. Rosenthal, ExpressNews.com, 18 Oct. 2019 My mother catered to Noosie’s every whim, speaking to her in Arabic baby talk, and her anticipation for grandchildren became less latent. — Marlo Safi, National Review, 24 Aug. 2019 Sanad alternated effortlessly between babbling baby talk to his cousin Salma and cracking jokes with the adults. — Washington Post, 2 Aug. 2019 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'baby talk.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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