Teenage

How to spell teenage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce teenage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does teenage mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of a person aged between thirteen and nineteen.

Teenage in a sentence

• The magazine targets a teenage readership with fashion and music features.

• Their teenage son spends most weekends at football practice.

Where does teenage come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on 'teen', the suffix that English attaches to the numbers thirteen through nineteen. That ending descends from the Old English 'tene' or 'tiene', a form closely tied to 'ten'; the original sense was simply 'ten more', so 'thirteen' meant 'three and ten'. The noun 'teens', meaning the years of life with names ending in -teen, was in use by the seventeenth century. The compound 'teenage' itself is much younger, appearing in the early twentieth century and becoming common from the 1920s as a way to describe the period of adolescence, soon followed by the noun 'teenager'. The spelling stays straightforward because both parts, 'teen' and 'age', are ordinary English words joined together.

How the word is built

• teen (the years thirteen to nineteen, from the -teen number ending)
• -age (noun/adjective suffix denoting a state or period)