infantry
Americannoun
-
soldiers or military units that fight on foot, in modern times typically with rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, etc., as weapons.
-
a branch of an army composed of such soldiers.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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.
Vocabulary lists containing infantry
The Things They Carried
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The American Civil War
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Ancient Rome - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Bill Mauldin, an enlisted soldier with the 45th Infantry in Europe during World War II, was also a cartoonist for the 45th Division News and for Stars and Stripes.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 5, 2026
Gen. James Bartholomees, commander of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division that focuses on the Indo-Pacific.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 13, 2025
Northern Command tweeted that the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team has some members on the ground in Los Angeles, with more to come.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 8, 2025
The loss of four soldiers from the Third Infantry Division is a tragedy.
From Salon • Apr. 1, 2025
It clearly marks all the mines buried between the American Army’s Thirty-Seventh Infantry Division’s strategic military position and Santo Tomas.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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.
