[OE. fóstercild, f. FOSTER sb.1] A child as related to persons who have reared it as their own, or (esp. in Ireland and the Highlands) to its wet-nurse and her husband; a nursling.

1

a. 1200.  Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker, 538. Alumnus, fostercild.

2

1590.  Spenser, F. Q., III. ii. 33.

        Then I auow by this most sacred head
Of my deare foster child, to ease thy griefe,
And win thy will.

3

1612.  Davies, Why Ireland, etc. (1787), 135. The foster-children do love, and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept, more than of their natural parents and kindred.

4

1717.  Addison, Ovid’s Met., III. 346.

        The Goddess, thus disguis’d in age, beguil’d,
With pleasing Stories, her false Foster-child.

5

1828.  Scott, F. M. Perth, xxxiv. The passions of Torquil, who entertained for his foster-child even a double portion of that passionate fondness which always attends that connexion in the Highlands, took a different turn.

6

  fig.  1820.  Keats, Ode on Grecian Urn, 1.

        Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
  Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.

7

1846.  H. Rogers, Ess. (1874), I. iv. 153. He [Leibnitz] may be said to have been a foster-child of literature.

8