teenage

See also: teen-age

English

WOTD – 31 March 2016

Etymology 1

From -teen +‎ age. First attested in 1921.

Alternative forms

• teen-age, teen age
• teenaged

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: tēnʹāj, IPA^(key): /ˈtiːneɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: teen‧age

Adjective

teenage (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to an age between thirteen and nineteen years old.

   Fred's teenage years were the most difficult of times.

   • 2014, John Shirley, Her Hunger:

     It was a teenage girl with Cleopatraesque black hair; tight jeans and a tie dyed T-shirt cut off to show her stud-pierced navel.

   • 2025 February 7, Josie Ensor, “Meet Elon Musk’s ‘baby-faced assassins’ leading Doge takeover”, in The Times‎^[1]:

     Coristine is one of a team of teenage and twentysomething software engineers, apparently conscripted by Musk in his largely unchecked war against bureaucracy.

Derived terms

• teenager

Related terms

• teens

Translations

of an age between 13 and 19

• Bulgarian: юношески (bg) (junošeski)
• Danish: teenage
• Esperanto: adoleska
• Finnish: teini-ikäinen (fi)
• French: adolescent (fr)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: tenårig, tenåring (no)s-

  Nynorsk: tenårig, tenårings-

• Polish: nastoletni (pl)
• Russian: подростко́вый (ru) (podrostkóvyj)
• Swedish: tonårig

Etymology 2

From teen (Kentish variant of tine (“enclose within a wattle fence”)) +‎ -age (suffix forming abstract nouns). First attested circa 1700.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: tēnʹĭj, IPA^(key): /ˈtiːnɪd͡ʒ/
• Hyphenation: teen‧age

Noun

teenage (uncountable)

1. (obsolete, chiefly Kent dialect) Brushwood for fences and hedges.

Synonyms

• teenet

References

• “teenage n.”, under John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “teen, v.”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.