young adult

English

Noun

young adult (plural young adults)

  2. (often attributive) A person who has achieved the age of majority but whose character and personality are still developing as they gain experience.
    Synonym: YA
    Hypernym: adult
    Hyponyms: young man, young lady
    Coordinate terms: adolescent, teenager; kid; middle-ager, older adult
    Near-synonyms: AYA; emerging adult
    Young adult actress Annie Jay wrote a book called Stars in Your Eyes, Feet on the Ground giving career advice for young adult actors.
  4. (publishing, often attributive, sometimes capitalized) An adolescent; a genre of writing aimed primarily at this readership.
    Synonym: YA
    My favorite young adult writer, Jen Derbyshire, just published her 50th paperback novel, the latest in an adventure series spanning fifteen years.
    Emily said to shelve these books in Young Adult and to make a table display with some of them.

Usage notes

  • This is a nebulous concept and no fixed ages can be sensibly assigned to the term. However:
    • in psychology and medicine, age-ranges such as 18 to 40 or 15 to 30[1] are sometimes quoted.
    • in publishing, young adult novels are aimed at adolescents with an age-range of 12 to 18, and young adult writers are authors of these books, not teenage aspiring authors.

Translations

References

  1. ^ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pedi.12198/abstract

Further reading

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