teenager
Americannoun
-
teenagers
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of teenager
Explanation
If you're younger than 20 but older than 12, congratulations! You're a teenager! Teenagers are also known as teens or adolescents. Generally, teenagers have finished elementary school, are growing fairly quickly, and are in the last stage of development before they become official adults. As a teenager, the things you may do include graduating from high school, getting a driver's license, and working at a paid job. Before teenager was coined in the 1920s, the word was teener.
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:
In just two years Johan Manzambi has gone from being an unknown teenager to a European star.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
Her lawyers believe that if she was found guilty of the same crime today as a teenager she would not receive a death sentence.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026
Though I had drifted away from Russian as a teenager, I had grown up speaking it at home in the New Jersey suburbs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
Concealing her own reactions, Ms. Kinetz questions a Nigerian teenager and veteran scam artist, Ayomide, about the processes involved in the operations, the scripts, and the vast amount of information they have on potential victims.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
Sitting at the chess table, the professor and the teenager created an almost comic tableau.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
The demonstrations, which started in Paris and have seen teenagers blockading their schools for days, stem from issues including overcrowded classes and teacher shortages.
From BBC ● Sep. 28, 2026
The number of teenagers who were baptized this year in France was 8,152, up from 7,404 last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
Growing up, I was one of those reflexively contrarian teenagers who hated anything popular and found value in almost anything obscure, independent or weird.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
While some teenagers may mark their 18th birthdays by buying a lottery ticket or getting a first tattoo, Deon Radcliff Jr. had different priorities.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
Five of them were teenagers, university students of Serbian descent who had been born and raised in Bosnia.
From "The War to End All Wars: World War I" by Russell Freedman
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.
