stripling

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See also: Stripling

English

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WOTD – 20 November 2020

Etymology

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From Middle English stripling (“an adolescent, a youth (specifically one who is male); a child”) [and other forms],[1] possibly from strepen (“to remove the clothes of, undress, strip; to peel off; to skin (an animal); to remove; to take something away from someone; to plunder, rob”)[2] (connoting something that is stripped and thin, and yet to reach its full size)[3] + -ling (suffix forming diminutives).[4] Strepen is derived from Old English *strēpan (Anglian), *strīepan, *strīpan, *strȳpan (West Saxon), from Proto-West Germanic *straupijan,[5] from Proto-Germanic *straupijaną (“to strip; to pluck; to wipe”), from *streupaną (“to touch”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *strew-, *sterw-, *ster- (“a strip; a streak; a beam, ray”)) + *-janą (suffix forming causatives from strong verbs with the sense of ‘to cause to do’). The English word is analysable as strip (“long, narrow piece”) +‎ -ling.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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stripling (plural striplings)

  1. (archaic, also attributive, sometimes humorous) A young man in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad. [from 14th c.].
    Synonyms: sapling, shaveling, (archaic, rare) springald; see also Thesaurus:boy
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Samuel 17:56, column 1:
      And the king ſaid, Enquire thou whoſe ſonne the ſtripling is.
    • 1634, Miles Sandys, Prudence:
      And now, I suppose, my Striplings are formally clad, and togated, newly arrived at the Vniversities
    • 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 92:
      Figure to yourſelf, Madam, a fair ſtripling, between eighteen and nineteen, with his head reclin'd on one of the ſides of the chair, his hair in diſorder'd curls, irregularly ſhading a face, on which all the roſeate bloom of youth, and all the manly graces conſpired to fix my eyes and heart.
    • 1837, Venator [pseudonym; John Cooper], “Prefatory Remarks”, in The Warwickshire Hunt, from 1795 to 1836; […], London: Henry Harris, […]; Warwick, Warwickshire: J. Cooper, […], →OCLC, page vi:
      This is the sort of witchery, not easily defined—but, by its votaries, pretty sensibly felt, in hunting the fox. The light-hearted, high-spirited stripling, when cigaring it careless to cover, with a kind of a knowing demi-devil-may-care twist of his beaver, receives in his transit a benison from every real friend of the chase he may chance to pass; and the airy, eager zeal of the youthful aspirant to rolls, tumbles, and the brush, will flush his memory with the frolic gayety of other days, and animate his mind with reflections most welcome to his heart.
    • 1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, “Outcaste”, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press, →OCLC, part I, page 104:
      A berth was reserved for me by my friends in the same cabin as that of Sjt. Tryambakrai Mazmudar, the Junagadh vakil. They also commended me to him. He was an experienced man of mature age and knew the world. I was yet a stripling of eighteen without any experience of the world. Sjt. Mazmudar told my friends not to worry about me.
    • 2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker‎[1]:
      Altman in particular passed what would become known at YC as the young founders’ test: Can this stripling manage adults?
  2. (horticulture) A seedling with most of the leaves stripped off.

Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “stripling, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “strẹ̄pen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. ^ “stripling, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1919; “stripling, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  4. ^ “-ling, suf.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  5. ^ “strip, v.1”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1919; “strip1, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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