teen

¹

[teen]

adjective

1. teenage.

noun

1. a teenager.

teen

²

[teen]

noun

1. Archaic.,  suffering; grief.

2. Obsolete.,  injury; harm.

-teen

³

1. a suffix used to form cardinal numerals from 13 to 19.

-teen

¹

combining form

1. ten: added to modified forms of the numbers 3 to 9 to form the numbers 13 to 19

teen

²

/ tiːn /

adjective

1. informal,  another word for teenage

teen

³

/ tiːn /

noun

1. obsolete,  affliction or woe

Other Word Forms

• -teenth combining form

Word History and Origins

Origin of teen¹

First recorded in 1940–45; by shortening

Origin of teen²

before 1000; Middle English tene, Old English tēona; cognate with Old Frisian tiona, Old Saxon tiono, Old Norse tjōn

Origin of teen³

Middle English, Old English -tēne, combining form of ten; cognate with Dutch -tien, German -zehn

Word History and Origins

Origin of teen¹

Old English -tēne, -tӯne

Origin of teen²

Old English tēona; related to Old Saxon tiono, Old Frisian tiona injury

Example Sentences

The major change comes as the Menlo Park, Calif., company and other AI leaders face more scrutiny from parents, child safety groups and politicians about whether chatbots are harming the mental health of teens.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

"When a platform that builds a teen experience still then pulls the plug, it's saying that filtered chats aren't enough when the tech's emotional pull is strong," he told BBC News.

Read more on BBC

Aged in their late teens or early 20s and largely from Western backgrounds, they recruit pre-teen or teenage girls through gaming platforms such as Roblox or messaging apps such as Discord and Telegram.

Read more on BBC

By his teens, Muivah was already a Naga nationalist, singing "God Bless My Nagaland" at school and questioning why his people lived in "humiliation" under the colonial government.

Read more on BBC

On the campaign trail Milei, who fronted a short-lived band in his teens, took to the stage and improvised as a rock musician.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• juvenile 
• youngster 

When To Use

What does -teen mean?

The suffix -teen means “ten.” It is used to form cardinal numbers from 13 to 19.The form -teen comes from Old English -tēne, meaning “ten.” The Latin cognate of -tēne is -decim, from decem, also meaning “ten.” Find out how dozen is related to the combining form -decim at our entry for the word.