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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

kid.

A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkɪd/[ˈkʰɪd]
  1. A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult.

    countable · informal · uncountable
    She's a kid. It's normal for her to have imaginary friends.
  2. A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult. A person whose childhood took place in a particular time period or area.

    countable · informal · uncountable
    Only '90s kids will remember this toy.
    He's been living in Los Angeles for years now, but he's a Florida kid.
  3. A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult. One's son or daughter, regardless of age.

    countable · informal · uncountable
    This is Bobby, he is our youngest kid.
  4. A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult. Used as a form of address for a child, teenager or young adult.

    countable · informal · uncountable
  5. A child, adolescent, or (loosely) a young adult. An inexperienced person or one in a junior position.

    colloquial · countable · informal · uncountable
  6. A young goat.

    countable · uncountable
    He treated the oxen like they didn't exist, but he treated the goat kid like a puppy.
  7. A young goat. Kidskin.

    uncountable
  8. A young goat. The meat of a young goat.

    uncountable
  9. A young antelope.

    countable · uncountable
  10. A deception; an act of kidding somebody.

    countable · dated · uncountable
  11. A small wooden mess tub in which sailors received their food.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English kide, from Old Norse kið (“young goat”), from Proto-Germanic *kidją, *kittīną (“goatling, kid”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gʰaydn-, *ǵʰaydn- (“goat”) or Proto-Indo-European *gidʰ- (“kid, goatling, little goat”). Compare Swedish and Danish kid, German Kitz and Kitze, Albanian kedh and kec. The sense of child has been in use since the 1590s as slang, and since the 1840s in informal use.

verb/ˈkɪd/[ˈkʰɪd]
  1. To dupe or deceive.

    colloquial · participle · present · transitive · usually
    Are you kidding me?
    I kid you not!
  2. To dupe or deceive. To deceive or dupe as a joke.

    colloquial · participle · present · transitive · usually
    Stop kidding me! It's not funny.
  3. To dupe or deceive. To deceive oneself by having unrealistic expectations.

    colloquial · participle · present · reflexive · transitive · usually
    You're kidding yourself if you think you can be a rockstar.
  4. To mock or make a fool of (someone) in a playful way.

    colloquial · participle · present · transitive · usually
    They were always kidding her for her stutter.
  5. To joke.

    colloquial · intransitive · participle · present · usually
    You must be kidding!
    I'm only kidding!
  6. Of a goat: to give birth.

    intransitive
    That nanny over there with the white tail has kidded every year for the last five years.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English kide, from Old Norse kið (“young goat”), from Proto-Germanic *kidją, *kittīną (“goatling, kid”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gʰaydn-, *ǵʰaydn- (“goat”) or Proto-Indo-European *gidʰ- (“kid, goatling, little goat”). Compare Swedish and Danish kid, German Kitz and Kitze, Albanian kedh and kec. The sense of child has been in use since the 1590s as slang, and since the 1840s in informal use.

noun/ˈkɪd/[ˈkʰɪd]
  1. A seed pod, usually of a leguminous plant.

    UK · dialectal
Where this word comes from

Of uncertain origin. Possibly from Middle English *kidde, from Old English *cydde (“pouch, belly”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuddijā, derived from or related to Proto-Germanic *kuddô (“bag, sack, pod, shell, husk”).

noun/ˈkɪd/[ˈkʰɪd]
  1. Synonym of faggot (“bundle of heath and furze”).

    dated
Where this word comes from

Compare Welsh cidysen.

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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.