Adulthood

How to spell adulthood

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce adulthood

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does adulthood mean?

1. nounThe state or period of being a fully grown person, past childhood and adolescence.

Adulthood in a sentence

• Early adulthood often brings the first experience of paying rent and bills.

• The documentary follows three siblings from their teenage years into adulthood.

Where does adulthood come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word joins two pieces of very different age and origin. The first part, 'adult', comes from the Latin adultus, the past participle of adolescere, a verb that meant 'to grow up' or 'to mature'; that same root also gives us 'adolescent', the person still in the process of growing. The second part, '-hood', is a native English suffix descended from the Old English had, which originally meant a 'state', 'rank', or 'condition' and once stood as a word in its own right before shrinking to a mere ending in words such as 'childhood', 'neighbourhood', and 'brotherhood'. So 'adulthood' is literally the condition of being grown up, a Latin stem capped with a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon tail. The combination became common in English only in the nineteenth century, long after 'adult' itself arrived in the 1500s. The main spelling point to remember is the single 'd' in the middle and the 'hood' ending borrowed from words people already know well.

How the word is built

• adult (from Latin adultus: grown up)
• -hood (Old English -had: state or condition)