chrisom child

chrisom child

n. Archaic
An infant that dies before one month of age.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Will Coster suggests that the term "chrisom child," sometimes found in English parish registers, gradually changed its meaning during the century after the Elizabethan settlement from "recently baptized" to "unbaptized." Until the reunion of soul and body after the Resurrection, earthly graves were the proper repositories for the corpses of the dead.
The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
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