[possibly f. BAND, swathe + -LING; but considered by Mahn, with greater probability, a corruption of Ger. bänkling bastard f. bank bench, i.e., ‘a child begotten on a bench, and not in the marriage-bed’; cf. BASTARD.] A young or small child, a brat. (Often used depreciatively, and formerly as a synonym of bastard.)
1593. Drayton, Eclog., vii. 102. Lovely Venus … Smiling to see her wanton Bantlings game.
1635. Quarles, Emblems, II. viii. (1718), 93. See how the dancing bells turn round … To please my bantling!
1756. Connoisseur, No. 123 (1774), IV. 142. Their base-born bantlings.
1791. Wolcott (P. Pindar), Rights Kings, Wks. 1812, II. 389. We whip a bantling when it kicks and cries.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 48. A tender virgin, accidentally and unaccountably enriched with a bantling.
1831. Coleridge, Table T., 24 July. Some real new-born bantling.
fig. 1679. R. W., O. Cromwell’s Ghost, 1.
| Wars, Janglings, Murders, and a Thousand more | |
| Vices like these, you know were heretofore. | |
| The only grateful Bantlings, which could find, | |
| A kind Reception in my gloomy Mind. |
1808. Byron, Let. Becher, Wks. (1846), 402/1. The interest you have taken in me and my poetical bantlings.
1864. Tennyson, Boädicea. Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Camulodune.
