adolescence

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English adolescence,^[2] borrowed from Old French adolescence, recorded in Old French from the late 13th century,^[3][4][5] and directly borrowed from Latin adolēscentia (“youth, the time between childhood and adulthood”), also adulēscentia.^[3][4][6] The Latin noun is formed from adolēscēns (“growing up, youthful”), the present participle of adolēscō (“to grow up, come to maturity”),^[3][4][5][7] which is ad- (“to”) and alēscō (“to be nourished, grow”),^[4][8][3] an inchoative of alō (“to nourish”),^[4][8][9] from a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *al- (“to grow, nourish”).^[4] Ayto notes that the past participle of the same verb, adultus (“grown”), is the source of adult.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The age following childhood, the period of growing up: first recorded before 1425 in a translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie, which glosses it wexing age, "growing age".^[3][2] Barnhart also dates it probably before 1425.^[5] Etymonline notes that adolescency is slightly earlier, from the late 14th century,^[4] although the Shorter Oxford dates adolescency only to the late 15th.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its Latin meaning of the growing years between childhood and adulthood.^[4][3] Etymonline gives the traditional span as roughly the 15th to the 21st year, or 14 to 25 for males and 12 to 21 for females.^[4] In the 15th century Lydgate wrote of teaching the young virtuously in ther adolescence.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as the age after childhood but before puberty, or more widely the part of life before the body reaches its full growth;^[11] the modern definitions instead place it between the onset of puberty and adulthood.^[3][12][9] It is now also used of animals up to sexual maturity, and figuratively of an early stage in the growth of a nation, a company or a culture,^[12][6] and in geology of a stage of valley formation by running water.^[6] Tréguer traces the phrase the awkward age for adolescence to 1832.^[13]

Timeline

• before 1425 – the period of growing up after childhood.^[3][2]
• before 1439 – Lydgate writes of teaching the young in ther adolescence.^[2]
• 1755 – Johnson's definition, "the age succeeding childhood".^[11]
• 1832 – the phrase the awkward age for adolescence.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. The period of physical and psychological development between the onset of puberty and adulthood: She spent most of her adolescence in Lisbon.^{[12][9][6][3]}
2. The state or condition of being adolescent.^[3][6]
3. A similar period in animals, ending at sexual maturity.^[12]
4. A stage in the development of something before it reaches maturity: the adolescence of the film industry.^[12][6]
5. In geology, the stage of erosion or valley formation by running water between youth and maturity.^[6]

Word family

• preadolescence

Related words

• adolescent
• adult
• alimony
• alimentary

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
13. ^ a b Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "‘the awkward age’ – ‘l’âge ingrat’", 10 May 2018