youth

plural youths · alternative yought · alternative youthe

1. uncountableThe quality or state of being young.

   Her youth and beauty attracted him to her.

   2 more examples

   Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.

   1910, Emerson Hough, “The Purchase Price”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Feel awfully about Scott... It was a terrible thing for him to love youth so much that he jumped straight from youth to senility without going through manhood. The minute he felt youth going he was frightened again and thought there was nothing between youth and age.

   1936 Feb. 15, Ernest Hemingway, letter to Maxwell Perkins

   Synonyms: juvenility, youngness, youngth, youthfulness · Antonyms: age, dotage, old age, senility

2. uncountableThe part of life following childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to adulthood.

   Make the most of your youth, it will not last forever.

   3 more examples

   I made many mistakes in my youth, but learned from them all.

   I don't find the pose of careless youth charming and engaging any more than you find the pose of careworn age fascinating and eccentric, I should imagine.

   1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 2, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section I, page 35

   Toward the end of the war, Benoit was sent off on his own with forged papers; he wound up working as a horse groom at a chalet in the Loire valley. Mandelbrot describes this harrowing youth with great sangfroid.

   2013 January 28, Brian Hayes, “Father of Fractals”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 62

3. countableA young person.

   There was a group of youths hanging around the parking lot, reading fashion magazines and listening to music.

   Synonyms: adolescent, child, kid, lad, teen, teenager, youngster · Antonyms: adult, grown-up

4. countableA young man; a male adolescent or young adult.

   […]and then a youth appeared—no one quite knew where from or to whom he belonged—but he settled down with them in a happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived together.

   1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 274–275

   Synonyms: boy, young man

5. uncountableYoung persons, collectively.

   The actual brides- and grooms-to-be are not in attendance—many youth would be embarrassed by their parents’ matchmaking efforts, and often do not live in the same city anyway.

   2012 March, Mary Bergstrom, “Tipping Gender Scales: From Boys Rule to Girl Power About Face”, in All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China’s Youth, New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 77

   Synonyms: adolescents, kids, teenagers, teens, young people, youngsters