teenage

See also: teen-age

English

WOTD – 31 March 2016

Etymology 1

From -teen +‎ age. First attested in 1921.

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: tēnʹāj, IPA(key): /ˈtiːneɪd͡ʒ/
  • Audio (General Australian):(file)
  • Hyphenation: teen‧age

Adjective

teenage (not comparable)

  1. Of or relating to an age between thirteen and nineteen years old.
    Fred's teenage years were the most difficult of times.
    • 2014, John Shirley, Her Hunger:
      It was a teenage girl with Cleopatraesque black hair; tight jeans and a tie dyed T-shirt cut off to show her stud-pierced navel.
    • 2025 February 7, Josie Ensor, “Meet Elon Musk’s ‘baby-faced assassins’ leading Doge takeover”, in The Times[1]:
      Coristine is one of a team of teenage and twentysomething software engineers, apparently conscripted by Musk in his largely unchecked war against bureaucracy.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

From teen (Kentish variant of tine (enclose within a wattle fence)) +‎ -age (suffix forming abstract nouns). First attested circa 1700.

Pronunciation

Noun

teenage (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete, chiefly Kent dialect) Brushwood for fences and hedges.
Synonyms
  • teenet
References