Young
adjectiveHaving lived or existed for only a short time; not old.
How to spell young
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce young
What does young mean?
- adjectiveHaving lived or existed for only a short time; not old.
Young in a sentence
-
My nephew is too young to drive.
-
When I was young, we had no internet.
Where does young come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Young descends from the Old English geong, which meant 'youthful' or 'in an early stage of life', and it traces back through the Proto-Germanic jungaz to the same ancient root that gave Latin its iuvenis, meaning 'young person'. That shared ancestry is why English words like 'juvenile' and 'junior' are distant cousins of plain 'young'. The Old English geong was pronounced with a softened g that eventually slid into the y sound we use today, while the spelling held onto letters that no longer match the sound. The puzzling 'ou' and silent-feeling 'g' are leftovers from earlier forms rather than a guide to modern pronunciation. The word has stayed in constant everyday use for well over a thousand years, changing its look far less than its sound.
How the word is built
- young (a single native root word, not built from prefix or suffix)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.