youthful

Etymology

It is formed from English youth + -ful.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The noun youth is from Old English geoguð (“the early stage of life; young people”), from Proto-Germanic *jugunthi-, from Proto-Indo-European *yeu- (“vital force, youthful vigor”).^[3] The adjective of the older language was geoguðlic (“youthlike”), and English later also had youthly, youthsome and youthy.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of or suited to the young: 1561, in T. Hoby's translation of Castiglione's Courtyer.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1560s, Merriam-Webster to 1557.^[3][7]

Semantic evolution

The word first described what belongs to the young, and only from 1590, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, a person who still is young.^[2] A figurative use for what is at an early stage, or has the freshness of youth, appears in 1594, in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.^[2] Johnson (1755) distinguishes young, suitable to the first part of life, and vigorous as in youth.^[6] Geographers took it up in 1896, when W. M. Davis applied it to the first stages of a landform.^[2]

Timeline

• 1561 – of or suited to the young.^[2]
• 1590 – still young.^[2]
• 1594 – at an early stage; fresh, vigorous.^[2]
• 1846 – youthful-looking, in Poe.^[2]
• 1896 – of a landform, in its first stages of development.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Still young: a youthful team of engineers.^[2][4][6]
2. Of, characteristic of, or suited to the young; juvenile: youthful enthusiasm.^[8][7][2]
3. Fresh and vigorous, as if young: My grandmother stays remarkably youthful at eighty-six.^[8][2]
4. At an early stage of development: a youthful industry.^[8][7][2]
5. (physical geography) Of a river, valley or landform, at the first stage of the cycle of erosion.^[8][2]

Word family

• youthfully
• youthfulness
• unyouthful

Related words

• youth
• young
• -ful

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins