children
- 1Plural of child.
The school enrolled over three hundred children this year.
Several children waited at the bus stop in the rain.
Note
A double plural hiding in plain sight. Old English ċildru already meant "children," and its Middle English descendant childre, which survives in dialect as childer, later took a second ending, -en, to give the modern form. The plural follows every use of child. It covers grown sons and daughters, since one's child is one's child at any age, and figurative uses like children of the city.
children is a form of child
child, noun: A young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of adulthood; a boy or girl. Full entry
- Forms
- childchildren plural
- Spelling
- child → children: irregular plural (no -s)
Use it in a sentence
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Origin
"Children" comes from Middle English "children," an altered form of the earlier "childre." This goes back to Old English "ċildru"/"ċildra," the plural of "ċild" ("child"), essentially "child" plus the plural ending "-ren."