Children
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/
- Hyphenation: child + ren
Alternative forms
- childer archaic
Origin
From Middle English children, alteration of earlier childre ("children"), from Old English Ä‹ildru, Ä‹ildra ("children"), plural of Ä‹ild ("child").
Noun
plural
- Plural of child.
- 1963, Margery Allingham, The China Governess Chapter 7, ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. …’
- 2013-06-14, Jonathan Freedland, Obama's once hip brand is now tainted, Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.