stripling
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of stripling
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at strip 2, -ling 1
Explanation
You can use the old-fashioned noun stripling to talk about a teenager, though few people these days will know what you're talking about. Like many old words in English, the -ling in this one clues you up that it's a smaller version of the real thing. Exactly how the strip part applies is lost in the mists of time, but it may have to do with being thin as a strip from lacking the muscular development of full manhood: the word stripling is a somewhat poetic epithet for a youth.
Vocabulary lists containing stripling
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
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Mythology
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"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 19–24
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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.
Not since 1996, when Roy was a stripling of 24, have all 12 required appropriations bills been separately signed into law.
From Washington Post • Feb. 10, 2023
Occasionally, however, he overdid the youthful bit: after all, at the age of fifty-two, he is hardly a stripling.
From The New Yorker • Dec. 20, 2015
As a stripling in his late 70s, he shambled convincingly as the 87-year-old Firs in the Taper's 2006 revival of "The Cherry Orchard."
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 13, 2015
The Bay of Pigs debacle left Khrushchev convinced that Kennedy was a callow stripling whom he could bludgeon at will.
From New York Times • Jun. 10, 2011
The knights you have chosen to follow me are stout fellows and bear the command of a stripling with good humor.
From "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine
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.
