/tʃaɪld/, [tʃaɪ̯ɫd], [ˈtʃaɪ̯.ɫ̩d]
OriginFrom 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”).
- broadlyA person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority).
“Go easy on him: he is but a child.”
“And not just the children, teenagers too. Chuck wants a football, Kathleen a tattoo.”
“It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in Americ”
- broadly, sometimesA 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.
- 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.”
- The thirteenth Lenormand card.
- figurativelyA person considered a product of a place or culture, a member of a tribe or culture, regardless of age.
“the children of Israel”
“He is a child of his times.”
“For more than forty years, he preached the creed of art and beauty. He was heir to the ancient wisdom of Israel, a child of Germany, a subject of Great Britain, later an American citizen, but in truth”
- figurativelyAnything derived from or caused by something.
“Poverty, disease, and despair are the children of war.”
- figurativelyA data item, process, or object which has a subservient or derivative role relative to another.
“The child node then stores the actual data of the parent node.”
“The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf).”
- A subordinate node of a tree.
- figurativelyAn adult or adolescent with childish or stupid behaviors.
“My husband is such a child, going out with his sled everytime it snows.”
- obsolete, specificallyA female child, a girl.
“A boy, or a Childe I wonder?”
- alt-ofAlternative letter-case form of child often used when referring to God (Jesus) or another important child who is understood from context.
“He appeared as an only begotten Child, as a Child calling us to be children also, and yet with this difference, that He and His Father maintained a holy intimacy with each other which no one dared to ”
“This emendation is echoed in Thekla's reunion with Paul outside the city, where she offers the following prayer of thanksgiving: God, King and Blessed Creator of everything, and Father of your great a”
- ambitransitive, archaicTo give birth; to beget or procreate.
“My liefe (ſayd ſhe) ye know, that long ygo,
Whileſt ye in durance dwelt, ye to me gaue
A little mayde, the which ye chylded tho ;
The ſame againe if now ye liſt to haue,
The ſame is yonder Lady, w”
“And from his fertill hollow wombe forth ran,
(Clad in rare weedes and ſtrange habiliment)
A Nymph, for age able to goe to man,
An hundreth plants beſide (euen in his ſight)
Childed an hundreth Nym”
“[…]But then the mind much ſufferance doth or'e ſcip,
When griefe hath mates,and bearing fellowſhip :
How light and portable my paine ſeemes now,
When that which makes me bend, makes the King bow,
”
Formschildren(plural) · childer(archaic, dialectal, plural) · childe(alternative, archaic) · chile(alternative, Southern-US, pronunciation-spelling) · childrens(alternative) · childs(alternative, nonstandard, rare) · childs(present, singular, third-person) · childing(participle, present) · childed(participle, past) · childed(past) · Childe(alternative) · Chill(alternative)