puberty

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English puberte,^[2][3] borrowed from Middle French puberté and directly borrowed from Latin pūbertās (“age of maturity, manhood”),^{[4][3][5][2][6]} formed from pūber (“adult, grown up”) and the suffix -tās.^[4][7][8][9] The French word, recorded from about 1365, was at first a legal term for the period after childhood,^[4] and the American Heritage Dictionary and Barnhart call it Old French.^[10][3] The Latin adjective is related to a Latin noun meaning the hair that appears at maturity, or the private parts, the source of pubes and pubic,^[11][9][12] and its origin is uncertain;^[5] Merriam-Webster and Barnhart suggest a link with puer (“boy”), as Skeat and Weekley did.^{[8][3][13][14]} Other Romance languages have Catalan pubertat, Spanish pubertad and Italian pubertà.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The time of reaching maturity, youth: about 1384, in the early Wycliffite Bible, where a young woman mourns "the husbonde of hir puberte", that is, of her years of marriageable age.^[2][4][3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that Latin pūber meant "adult" and so, by implication, "covered in hair";^[15] English kept the "adult" strand in puberty and the "hairy" strand in pubescent.^[15] Hoad finds the word rare until the 16th century.^[16] The OED notes that the specific reference to the physical changes of the body is not found in French until the late 16th century.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it as the time of life when the two sexes begin to be acquainted, and quoted a passage on the breaking of the voice at the years of puberty.^[17][5] Erasmus Darwin used it of plants coming into flower or fruit (1800), a sense that did not last.^[4] Modern dictionaries define it biologically, as the stage when the sex glands become active and the secondary sexual characteristics appear;^[18][10][8] Merriam-Webster adds that the age of puberty has often been fixed in law as 14 for boys and 12 for girls.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1384 – the period of reaching sexual maturity, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[4][2][3]
• 16th century – becomes frequent in English.^[16]
• 1755 – Johnson defines it as the time when the two sexes first become acquainted.^[17]
• 1800 – of a plant, the stage of bearing flowers or fruit (obsolete by 1837).^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The stage of life in which a young person becomes sexually mature and able to reproduce, marked by the development of the secondary sexual characteristics: He grew several inches in the year he reached puberty.^{[18][10][8][4]}
2. The age at which this happens, in law often taken as 14 for boys and 12 for girls.^[8]

Word family

• pubertal
• postpuberty
• prepuberty

Related words

• pubescent
• pubescence
• pubes
• pubic
• puerile

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
16. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
17. ^ 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.
18. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins