Child

How to spell child

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce child

What does child mean?

1. nounA young human being, especially one who is not yet an adult.

Child in a sentence

• Every child in the class received a free book.

• The museum offers a reduced ticket for each child under twelve.

Where does child come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descended from the Old English cild, which meant an infant or unborn baby and later any young person. Its older Germanic relatives are surprisingly hard to pin down, since the unusual plural 'children' does not follow the normal pattern; the original Old English plural was 'cildru', and over time an extra '-en' ending was tacked on, giving the double plural marker we still keep today. The vowel originally sounded short, as it still does in 'children', which is why many people find the long 'i' in the singular slightly odd. The word kept its 'ch' spelling because the Old English 'c' before certain vowels was already softening toward the sound we now write as 'ch'. It has stayed remarkably stable in meaning for more than a thousand years, always centring on the young of human beings.

How the word is built

• child (whole word from Old English cild: a young person, infant)