YOUTH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does youth mean? 

• YOUTH (noun)
  The noun YOUTH has 6 senses:

1. a young person (especially a young man or boy)

2. young people collectively

3. the time of life between childhood and maturity

4. early maturity; the state of being young or immature or inexperienced

5. an early period of development

6. the freshness and vitality characteristic of a young person

  Familiarity information: YOUTH used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• YOUTH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A young person (especially a young man or boy)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

spring chicken; young person; younker; youth

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

juvenile; juvenile person (a young person, not fully developed)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "youth"):

blade (a dashing young man)

hobbledehoy (an awkward bad-mannered adolescent boy)

pup; puppy (an inexperienced young person)

pupil; school-age child; schoolchild (a young person attending school (up through senior high school))

slip (a young and slender person)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Young people collectively

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

young; youth

Context example:

youth everywhere rises in revolt

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

age bracket; age group; cohort (a group of people having approximately the same age)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The time of life between childhood and maturity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

time of life (a period of time during which a person is normally in a particular life state)

Meronyms (parts of "youth"):

adolescence (the time period between the beginning of puberty and adulthood)

bloom; bloom of youth; salad days (the best time of youth)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Early maturity; the state of being young or immature or inexperienced

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

matureness; maturity (state of being mature; full development)

Sense 5

Meaning:

An early period of development

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

early days; youth

Context example:

during the youth of the project

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

period; period of time; time period (an amount of time)

Sense 6

Meaning:

The freshness and vitality characteristic of a young person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

juvenility; youth; youthfulness

Hypernyms ("youth" is a kind of...):

youngness (the opposite of oldness)

 Context examples 

You should begin now in your youth.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Leave go, I say—Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At this last he remembered his wild youth and smiled.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The young woman arranged the cottage and prepared the food, and the youth departed after the first meal.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

All the people grieved for the handsome youth; then they went away, leaving him alone by the sea.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

It was the very event to engage those who talk most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in the place were soon in the happiness of frightful news.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he’s not such a youth, either.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

While Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger with youth.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She was still handsome and bore every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)