child
Pluralchildren
Pluralchildren
Formschilds, childing, childed
- 1A young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of adulthood; a boy or girl.
A child cannot legally sign a contract in most countries.
Schools usually group children by age rather than ability.
UsageThe plural is children (not
incorrect: childrens), and the plural possessive is children's: children's books.Similarkid, youngster, minor, juvenile
Note
Because the threshold can be natural, cultural or legal, the word can stretch to take in teenagers or narrow to the very young.
- 2A son or daughter, by birth or adoption, of any age.
Their adult child still phones them every Sunday.
She has two children, both already in their fifties.
UsageUsually with a possessive: my child, their children. Without one, readers may take it as a young person.
Similaroffspring
Oppositeparent
Note
Here the word measures kinship, not age, and it almost always comes with a possessive: my child, their children, his youngest child. That is why adult children or a child of forty-three are not contradictions. It also covers a baby not yet born, as in their unborn child or expecting her second child, and the old-fashioned phrase with child means pregnant. Without the possessive, the word tends to drift back toward the meaning about age.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- With child means pregnant. en.wiktionary.org
- 3A grown person who behaves without maturity or responsibility, or who is naive in some area.
Her husband is a child when he's sick, moaning from the couch all day.
The founders were brilliant engineers but children in matters of finance.
UsageSuch a child criticizes immature behavior; a child in money matters is someone inexperienced in one area.
Less common meanings
- 4A person or thing regarded as the product of a particular place, time, culture, or influence, as in 'a child of the sixties'.
He remained a child of the desert all his life.
Those poets were children of the Enlightenment.
UsageUsually a child of or children of: a child of his time, the children of Israel.
Similarproduct
Note
Kinship is borrowed here to express belonging: a person becomes the offspring of a people, a place or an age. It ignores age entirely, so an old man can still be a child of the Enlightenment.
- 5In computing, a node, process, or object that sits directly beneath or is derived from another, called its parent.
The operating system created a child to run the nightly backup.
Parent objects pass their settings down to their children.
Oppositeparent
Note
Computing borrows the whole family. A child has a parent, a child typically inherits settings from that parent, and anything beneath it may be its own children. Processes, objects and data items all take the word, and parent is almost always close by in the same sentence. In a tree structure, a child is any node directly below another.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- Computing uses family relationships as terminology. en.wikipedia.org
- A child has a parent and can itself have children. en.wikipedia.org
- Children commonly inherit settings from their parents, as child processes do. learn.microsoft.com
- The computing sense applies to processes, objects and data items. en.wiktionary.org
- A child node is directly below its parent in a tree. en.wikipedia.org
- 6A girl; a female offspring as distinct from a male one.
A boy, or a Childe I wonder?
c. 1610, William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”Note
A meaning that set the word against boy. In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1623), the Shepherd asks "A boy, or a Childe I wonder?", and there child means a girl. The sense is obsolete, so in older texts the contrast with boy is the clue. In present-day English the word never specifies a girl.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Child formerly meant a girl, in contrast with boy; this sense is obsolete. en.wiktionary.org
- It was first published in 1623. The approximate date 1610–1611 refers to composition, not first publication. folger.edu
- William Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale. internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
- The quoted wording occurs in the play; its speaker is the Shepherd. internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
- Child means a girl in this quotation. en.wiktionary.org
- The female-specific sense is obsolete. en.wiktionary.org
- 7To bear offspring; to bring a child into being.
My liefe (ſayd ſhe) ye know, that long ygo, Whileſt ye in durance dwelt, ye to me gaue A little mayde, the which ye chylded tho ; The ſame againe if now ye liſt to haue, The ſame is yonder Lady, whom high God did ſaue.
1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
The verb was made from the noun, and poets around 1600 used it both for bearing and for begetting, with or without an object. Book VI of Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) spells the past chylded, and Edward Fairfax's Tasso (1600) has a hundred plants that "childed an hundreth Nymphes." Its forms are regular (childs, childing, childed). Today bear or give birth does the work, outside pastiche of older verse.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 7 facts
- The verb derives from the noun child. en.wiktionary.org
- Around 1600, child was used in poetry for giving birth and begetting, transitively and intransitively. en.wiktionary.org
- Book VI of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene was first published in 1596. en.wikisource.org
- Spenser uses the past-tense spelling chylded in Book VI. en.wikisource.org
- Edward Fairfax's translation of Tasso was first published in 1600. gutenberg.org
- Fairfax's translation describes a hundred plants producing a hundred nymphs, using the quoted wording. en.wiktionary.org
- The verb has the regular forms childs, childing and childed. en.wiktionary.org
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
This word comes from Middle English "child" and Old English "ċild," going back to Proto-Germanic "*kelþaz" meaning "womb" or "fetus," and, on one account, to a Proto-Indo-European root for "womb," perhaps linked to a root meaning "to ball up, amass." It is related to Gothic "kilþei" (womb) and the Danish and Swedish words for "brood" or "litter."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- English child comes through Middle English child from Old English ċild. en.wiktionary.org
- The word traces back to reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kelþaz, glossed as womb or fetus. en.wiktionary.org
- One proposed deeper origin is a Proto-Indo-European root meaning womb, possibly connected to a root meaning to ball up or amass. en.wiktionary.org
- Child is cognate with Gothic kilþei meaning womb, Danish kuld meaning brood or litter, and Swedish kull meaning brood or litter. en.wiktionary.org
This comes from Middle English "childen," formed from the noun "child."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- The verb child comes from Middle English childen. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English childen was formed from the noun child. en.wiktionary.org