Juvenile

How to spell juvenile

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce juvenile

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does juvenile mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to young people, especially those below the legal age of adulthood.
2. adjectiveBehaving in a silly or immature way that is inappropriate for an adult.
3. nounA young person, particularly one not yet legally an adult.

Juvenile in a sentence

• adjective

  The case was heard in a juvenile court rather than an adult one.

• adjective

  His juvenile pranks in the office annoyed his colleagues.

• noun

  The shelter takes in any juvenile found sleeping rough.

• adjective

  The charity runs a juvenile literacy programme for teenagers.

• adjective

  She dismissed the email as a juvenile attempt to provoke her.

• noun

  The report focused on offences committed by a juvenile under sixteen.

Where does juvenile come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin juvenilis, meaning 'youthful' or 'belonging to youth', which was built on the noun juvenis, meaning 'a young person' or simply 'young'. That same juvenis root lies behind a surprising number of relatives, including 'junior' (literally 'younger') and even 'rejuvenate', which means to make young again. English adopted juvenile in the early 1600s, at first as a fairly neutral adjective for things connected with youth, before it developed its modern double life: the formal sense found in 'juvenile court' and the dismissive sense meaning 'childishly immature'. The tricky part of the spelling is the unstressed middle vowel, written with an 'e' in juve-N-ile even though the ear hears only a faint schwa, a direct echo of the Latin juvenis it descends from. Keeping that Latin 'juven-' core in mind is the easiest way to remember the letters.

How the word is built

• juven- (from Latin juvenis: young, a young person)
• -ile (adjective suffix: relating to)