youth

• yought, youthe (both obsolete)

From Middle English youthe, youghte, ȝouþe, from Old English ġeoguþ (“the state of being young; youth”), from Proto-West Germanic *juwunþa, from Proto-Germanic *jugunþō, *jugunþiz (“youth”), corresponding to young +‎ -th. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Juugd, West Frisian jeugd, Dutch jeugd, German Low German Jöögd, German Jugend.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /juːθ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /juθ/

  • Audio (General American):

    (file)

• (UK, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /jʉːθ/, [jʉθ]
• Rhymes: -uːθ

youth (countable and uncountable, plural youths)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being young.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, “The Purchase Price”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1936 Feb. 15, Ernest Hemingway, letter to Maxwell Perkins:

     Feel awfully about Scott... It was a terrible thing for him to love youth so much that he jumped straight from youth to senility without going through manhood. The minute he felt youth going he was frightened again and thought there was nothing between youth and age.

   Synonyms: juvenility, youngness, (archaic) youngth, youthfulness

   Antonyms: age, dotage, old age, senility

   Her youth and beauty attracted him to her.

2. (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 adulthood.

   Make the most of your youth, it will not last forever.

   I made many mistakes in my youth, but learned from them all.

   • 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 2, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, →OCLC, section I, page 35:

     I don't find the pose of careless youth charming and engaging any more than you find the pose of careworn age fascinating and eccentric, I should imagine.

   • 2013 January, Brian Hayes, “Father of Fractals”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 62:

     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.

3. (countable) A young person.

   Synonyms: adolescent, child, kid, lad, teen, teenager, youngster

   Antonyms: adult, grown-up

   There was a group of youths hanging around the parking lot, reading fashion magazines and listening to music.

4. (countable) A young man; a male adolescent or young adult.

   Synonyms: boy, young man

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 274–275:

     […] 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.

5. (uncountable, used with a plural or singular verb) Young persons, collectively.

   Synonyms: adolescents, kids, teenagers, teens, young people, youngsters

• young

• “youth”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• youth in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• “youth”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

•   youth on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
•   youth on Wikiquote.Wikiquote

• Tuohy

youth

1. (Late Middle English) Alternative form of youthe