Youth
Pronunciation
- IPA: /juËθ/
- Rhymes: -uËθ
Origin
From Old English ġeoguþ, from West Germanic *juwunþ-, from a base corresponding to young + -th. Cognate with Dutch jeugd, German Jugend.
Full definition of youth
Noun
youth
(countable and uncountable; plural youths)- (uncountable) The quality or state of being young.Her youth and beauty is what attracted him to her.
- 1910, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price Chapter 1, Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.
- (uncountable) The part of life following childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood.Make the most of your youth, it will not last forever.I made many mistakes in my youth, but learned from them all.
- 2013-01, Brian Hayes, Father of Fractals, Toward the end of the war, Benoit was sent off on his own with forged papers; he wound up working as a horse groom at a chalet in the Loire valley. Mandelbrot describes this harrowing youth with great sangfroid.
- (countable) A young person.There were a group of youths hanging around the parking lot, reading fashion magazines and listening to music.
- (countable) A young man.
- 1919, William Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence,... and then a youth appeared—no one quite knew where from or to whom he belonged—but he settled down with them in a happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived together.
- (uncountable) (used in plural form) Young persons, collectively.
Synonyms
- (quality or state of being young) juvenility, youthfulness
- (young person) adolescent, child, kid, lad, teen, teenager, youngster
- (young man) boy, young man
- (young persons, collectively) adolescents, kids, teenagers, teens, young people, youngsters