kid
noun
a child or young person.
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kid
1 American
[kid]
/ kɪd /
noun
kids
plural
-
Informal. a child or young person.
-
(used as a familiar form of address.)
-
a young goat.
-
leather made from the skin of a kid or goat, used in making shoes and gloves.
-
a glove made from this leather.
verb (used with or without object)
kidded,
kidding
kid
2
American
[kid]
/ kɪd /
Kid
3
American
[kid]
/ kɪd /
noun
kid
1
British
/ kɪd /
noun
-
the young of a goat or of a related animal, such as an antelope
-
soft smooth leather made from the hide of a kid
-
informal
-
a young person; child
-
(modifier) younger or being still a child
kid brother
kid sister
-
-
dialect my younger brother or sister
verb
kid
2
British
/ kɪd /
verb
-
(tr) to tease or deceive for fun
-
(intr) to behave or speak deceptively for fun
-
(tr) to delude or fool (oneself) into believing (something)
don't kid yourself that no-one else knows
Kid
3
British
/ kɪd /
noun
kid
4
British
/ kɪd /
noun
kid
Idioms
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of kid1
First recorded in 1150–1200; Middle English kide, from Old Norse kith
Origin of kid2
First recorded in 1805–15; perhaps special use of kid 1
Explanation
If a farmer offers to introduce you to her kid, you might not know if she means her child or her baby goat. A kid is a child, informally, and it's also a young goat. Sometimes the word kid means a kind of soft leather made from goat skin. When kid is used as a verb, it means to tease or jokingly deceive someone — to kid them. Some sticklers for formality object to using kid to mean "child," but that meaning has been around since the 1590s. The "teasing" definition of kid comes from the sense of "treat like a child."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I had a pretty good arm from playing third base as a kid.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Megan Szostak, 26, was always a "bird kid".
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
When I was a kid, I always wondered why that happened, and the only explanation adults could provide amounted to, “Because.”
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
"Today a mother can send her kid off to school, work at Snabbit for four hours and come back before the kid comes back from school," he told AFP.
From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026
The big screen at the stadium shows the Phanatic playing peek-a-boo with a cute little kid.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
Burwell said he’s flattered by recent online praise from the likes of Ethel Cain, Flying Lotus and Kid Cudi for his score.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Price also confessed, “We’re pulling from Bob Dylan, ‘Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.’
From Salon ● Jul. 14, 2026
Strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” greet you—first the original, then, immediately afterward, the Kid Rock version—as you emerge onto a White House lawn transformed for the occasion.
From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2026
“I’m not going to say club life is dead,” said DJ Whoo Kid, a veteran New York radio host.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
“The smell seems to be bothering the other passengers. Kid, maybe you should open her window or something.”
From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
It’s so common for kids to never really understand how their parents grew up with money and how that shaped them.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 29, 2026
Wat directs them to leave immediately but Max starts to argue about the exit plan and soon enough those crazy kids are on their own.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
"And maybe their kids were just right there playing in the water," he added.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
Cities, rich and poor, in every geographic corner of the country, were seeing big declines in kids.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
“You’re telling me those kids out there are, what —ghosts?”
From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold
This claim of passivity kidded nobody except maybe himself.
From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2025
Harp gets kidded by one of his former players, Sean Brown, a member of the 1987 championship team who went on to Colorado.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2024
On a flight to Chicago, Devers kidded Bello he would hit two homers on Friday.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 15, 2023
The charming, comic sequence in which Elliott’s mother overlooks E.T. among a closetful of stuffed animals both kidded and celebrated the character’s potential take-home commodification; Spielberg was now also in the toy business.
From New York Times ● Aug. 4, 2022
Even though they kidded me, the other guys asked me what I’d learned about Guam and I told them.
From "Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two" by Joseph Bruchac
They’re kidding, but he invites himself along anyway, in the hope that hanging with 20-somethings will miraculously make him hip.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Hearing the poems recited in the epic Greek of antiquity would be a purist’s ideal—nothing more authentic than that—but who are we kidding?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
These statistics suggest that some analysts may be kidding themselves — and us — when they argue that the Nasdaq composite’s recent drop is healthy — nothing more than a normal bull-market rotation between sectors.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026
When harangued by CNBC’s Joe Kernan to “reject” the winners, Jeffries replied, “Donald Trump is the president right now. Are you kidding me?”
From Salon ● Jun. 28, 2026
She’s smiling, and I know she thinks I’m kidding around.
From "Clairboyance" by Kristiana Kahakauwila
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
