Etimology
Inherited from Middle English yong, yonge, from Old English ġeong, from Proto-West Germanic *jung, from Proto-Germanic *jungaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂yuh₁n̥ḱós, from *h₂yuh₁en- (“young”).
adjective
young (comparative younger, superlative youngest)
In the early part of growth or life; born not long ago.
At an early stage of existence or development; having recently come into existence.
(Not) advanced in age; (far towards or) at a specified stage of existence or age.
Junior (of two related people with the same name).
Early. (of a decade of life)
Youthful; having the look or qualities of a young person.
Of or belonging to the early part of life.
(obsolete) Having little experience; inexperienced; unpracticed; ignorant; weak.
Examples
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven!
"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished society."
I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
Irregular bedtimes may disrupt healthy brain development in young children, according to a study of intelligence and sleeping habits. ¶ Going to bed at a different time each night affected girls more than boys, but both fared worse on mental tasks than children who had a set bedtime, researchers found.
a lamb is a young sheep; these picture books are for young readers
the age of space travel is still young; a young business
[…] while the Fears of the People were young, they were encreas’d strangely by several odd Accidents […]
And thou, our Mother, twice two centuries young,
Bend with bright shafts of truth thy bow fresh-strung.
How young is your dog? Her grandmother turned 70 years young last month.
The young Mr. Chester must be in the wrong, and the old Mr. Chester must be in the right.
[…] Miss Hessy is as pretty a girl as eye can see, in her young twenties and a bit of a fortune to boot.
Ephraim would be in his young thirties.
[…] while this may appeal to older, better-off shoppers, vast numbers, especially those in their teens and young twenties, still want fast, cheap fashion.
Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.
My grandmother is a very active woman and is quite young for her age.
The cynical world soon shattered my young dreams.
Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.
Related words
synonyms
(born not long ago): youthful, junior; see also Thesaurus:young
(having qualities of a young person): youthful, juvenile
(of or belonging to the early part of life): juvenile
(inexperienced): underdeveloped, undeveloped, immature
antonyms
(antonym(s) of "born not long ago"): old, aged, grown up, senior, youthless, elderly
(antonym(s) of "having qualities of a young person"): aged, old, youthless, mature, elderly
(antonym(s) of "of or belonging to the early part of life"): senior, mature, elderly
(antonym(s) of "inexperienced"): mature, experienced, veteran
related terms
youth
noun
young (plural young)
(often as if a plural noun) Offspring, especially the immature offspring of animals.
Examples
The lion caught a gnu to feed its young.
The lion's young are curious about the world around them.
There is a logic in this behavior: a mother will not come into breeding condition again unless her young is ready to be weaned or has died, so killing a baby may hasten […]
verb
young (third-person singular simple present youngs, present participle younging, simple past and past participle younged)
(informal or demography) To become or seem to become younger.
(informal or demography) To cause to appear younger.
(geology) To exhibit younging.
Examples
The aging of a population refers to the fact that a population, as a unit of observation, is getting older .
Medicare data was "younged" by a month to achieve conformity with the conventional completed ages recorded in the census.
Shoshonitic magmatism younged southwards in the Superior Province, commensurate with the southwardly diachronous accretion of allochthonous subprovinces.
The existence of magmatic belts younging northward implies that slabs of Asian mantle subducted one after another under ranges north of the Himalayas.