American
[in-fuhn-tree] / ˈɪn fən tri /
noun
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infantries
plural
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soldiers or military units that fight on foot, in modern times typically with rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, etc., as weapons.
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a branch of an army composed of such soldiers.
infantry British
/ ˈɪnfəntrɪ /
noun
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Abbreviation: Inf. inf.
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soldiers or units of soldiers who fight on foot with small arms
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( as modifier )
an infantry unit
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"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of infantry
1570–80; < Italian infanteria, equivalent to infante boy, foot-soldier ( see infant) + -ria -ry
Explanation
Armies usually contain different divisions for different purposes. For example, soldiers on horseback belong to the Cavalry, those who work in communications are in the Signal Corps, and soldiers specially trained to fight on foot are members of the Infantry. It seems somewhat strange to have the word "infant" in a word that refers to a fighting military unit, but the word infantry once referred to the foot soldiers who were too young or too inexperienced to qualify for the cavalry. The word was taken from the Latin word for a youth, infantem, and so evolved into infantry after working its way through the Spanish, Italian, and French, appearing in English in the late 16th Century.
Keep Reading on Vocabulary.comVocabulary lists containing infantry
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
infantry infantries
The once-familiar picture of a war fought with infantry at the front and dog-fights in the air has become increasingly obsolete.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
You could think of it as the drone warfare of diplomacy, which is, instead of sending infantry in the normal way to do it and shooting up howitzers, you’re trying different approaches.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
Ellie says she had been desperate to be an infantry soldier.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
GM is years into developing its own version of the infantry squad vehicle, dubbed the ISV-Heavy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
Lone infantry began bending around the right flank.
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
Industrial culture hardly represented the subcontinent, where infantries of workmen, captured in archival film footage, lugged baskets of construction material for a building designed to look machined.
From New York Times ● Nov. 22, 2019
The soldiers, who deserve no little credit for their work, are members of the Twenty-eighth and the Tenth infantries.
From The Great White Tribe in Filipinia by Paul T. (Paul Thomas) Gilbert
The Romans," says Napoleon in his Memoirs, "had two infantries; the first, lightly armed, was provided with a missile weapon; the second, heavily armed, bore a short sword.
The two infantries were contending; gray Russian lines in the bottom land and already advancing up the slopes.
From Red Fleece by Will Levington Comfort
All other things being equal, both infantries suffer the same losses in the artillery duel.
From Battle Studies by Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.