See _The Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a Biographical Introduction by J.G. Whittier_ (Boston, 1883); and a chapter in T.W. Higginson's _Contemporaries_ (Boston, 1899).
CHILD, the common term for the offspring of human beings, generally below the age of puberty; the term is the correlative of "parent," and applies to either sex, though some early dialectical uses point to a certain restriction to a girl. The word is derived from the A.S. _cild_, an old Teutonic word found in English only, in other Teutonic languages _kind_ and its variants being used, usually derived from the Indo-European root _ken_, seen in Gr. [greek: genos], Lat. _genus_, and Eng. "kin"; _cild_ has been held to be a modification of the same root, but the true root is _kilth_, seen in Goth. _kilthei_, womb, an origin which appears in the expressions "child-birth," "to be with child," and the like; the plural in A.S. was _cild_, and later _cildru_, which in northern M.E. became _childre or childer_, a form dialectically extant, and in southern English _childeren_ or _children_ (with the plural termination -en, as in "brethren"). There are several particular uses of "child" in the English version of the Bible, as of a young man in the "Song of the three holy children," of descendants or members of a race, as in "children of Abraham," and also to express origin, giving a description of character, as "children of darkness." During the 13th and 14th centuries "child" was used, in a sense almost amounting to a title of dignity, of a young man of noble birth, probably preparing for knighthood. In the _York Mysteries_ of about 1440 (quoted in the _New English Dictionary_) occurs "be he churl or child," obviously referring to gentle birth, cf. William Bellenden's translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) "than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius." The spelling "childe" is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar instances are in the line of an old ballad quoted in _King Lear_, "childe Roland to the dark tower came," and in Byron's _Childe Harold_. With this use may be compared the Spanish and Portuguese _Infante_ and _Infanta_, and the early French use of _Valet_ (q.v.).