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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

child.

A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority).

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/tʃaɪld/General-American, Received-Pronunciation[tʃaɪ̯ɫd]General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈtʃaɪ̯.ɫ̩d]General-American, Received-Pronunciation[tʃəɪ̯(ə)ɫd]Canada, dialectal
  1. A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority).

    broadly
    Go easy on him: he is but a child.
    Regular chores can be appropriate for children, given age-appropriate limits on difficulty level and time on task.
  2. A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority). A youth aged 1 to 9 years, whereas neonates are aged 0 to 1 month, infants are aged 1 to 12 months, and adolescents are aged 10 to 20 years.

    broadly · sometimes
  3. One's direct descendant by birth, regardless of age; one's offspring; a son or daughter.

    My youngest child is forty-three this year.
    His adult children visit him yearly.
  4. The thirteenth Lenormand card.

  5. A figurative offspring A person considered a product of a place or culture, a member of a tribe or culture, regardless of age.

    figuratively
    the children of Israel
    He is a child of his times.
  6. A figurative offspring Anything derived from or caused by something.

    figuratively
  7. A figurative offspring A data item, process, or object which has a subservient or derivative role relative to another.

    figuratively
    The child node then stores the actual data of the parent node.
  8. Alternative form of childe (“youth of noble birth”).

    alt-of · alternative
  9. A subordinate node of a tree.

  10. An adult or adolescent with childish or stupid behaviors.

    figuratively
    My husband is such a child, going out with his sled everytime it snows.
  11. A female child, a girl.

    obsolete · specifically
Where this word comes from

From Middle English child, from Old English ċild, from Proto-West Germanic *kilþ, *kelþ, from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz (“womb; fetus”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵelt- (“womb”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up, amass”). Cognate with Danish kuld (“brood, litter”), Swedish kull (“brood, litter”), Icelandic kelta, kjalta (“lap”), Gothic 𐌺𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹 (kilþei, “womb”), Sanskrit जर्त (jarta), जर्तु (jártu, “vulva”).

verb/tʃaɪld/General-American, Received-Pronunciation[tʃaɪ̯ɫd]General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈtʃaɪ̯.ɫ̩d]General-American, Received-Pronunciation[tʃəɪ̯(ə)ɫd]Canada, dialectal
  1. To give birth; to beget or procreate.

    ambitransitive · archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English childen, from the noun child.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.