child

Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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See also: Child and Child.

English[edit]

A woman with two children c. 1933.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • enPR: chīld, IPA(key): /t͡ʃaɪld/
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  • Rhymes: -aɪld

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English child, from Old English ċild (“fetus; female baby; child”), from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz (“womb; fetus”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵelt- (“womb”). Cognate with Danish kuld (“brood, litter”), Swedish kull (“brood, litter”), Icelandic kelta, kjalta (“lap”), Gothic 𐌺𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹 (kilþei, “womb”), Sanskrit जर्त (jarta), जर्तु (jártu, “vulva”).

Alternative forms[edit]

Noun[edit]

child (plural children or (dialectal or archaic) childer)

  1. A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority)
    Go easy on him: he is but a child.
  2. (obsolete, specifically) A female child, a girl.
  3. (with possessive) One's direct descendant by birth, regardless of age; a son or daughter.
    My youngest child is forty-three this year.
  4. (cartomancy) The thirteenth Lenormand card.
  5. (figurative) A figurative offspring, particularly:
    1. A person considered a product of a place or culture, a member of a tribe or culture, regardless of age.
      The children of Israel.
      He is a child of his times.
      • 1984, Mary Jane Matz, The Many Lives of Otto Kahn: A Biography, page 5:
        For more than forty years, he preached the creed of art and beauty. He was heir to the ancient wisdom of Israel, a child of Germany, a subject of Great Britain, later an American citizen, but in truth a citizen of the world.
      • 2009, Edward John Moreton Dunsany, Tales of Wonder, page 64:
        Plash-Goo was of the children of the giants, whose sire was Uph. And the lineage of Uph had dwindled in bulk for the last five hundred years, till the giants were now no more than fifteen foot high; but Uph ate elephants […]
    2. Anything derived from or caused by something.
      • 1991, Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children:
        Poverty, disease, and despair are the children of war.
      • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly‎[1], volume 188, number 26, page 19:
        It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.
    3. (computing) A data item, process, or object which has a subservient or derivative role relative to another.
      The child node then stores the actual data of the parent node.
      • 2011, John Mongan, Noah Kindler, Eric Giguère, Programming Interviews Exposed:
        The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf).
  6. Alternative form of childe (“youth of noble birth”)

Synonyms[edit]

Antonyms[edit]

  • (daughter or son): father, mother, parent
  • (person below the age of adulthood): adult
  • (data item, process or object in a subordinate role): parent

Derived terms[edit]

Related terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

From Middle English childen, from the noun child.

Verb[edit]

child (third-person singular simple present childs, present participle childing, simple past and past participle childed)

  1. (archaic, transitive, intransitive) To give birth; to beget or procreate.
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 932900760, book VI, canto XII, stanza 17, page 512:
      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.
    • c. 1603–1606, [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […], published 1608, OCLC 54196469, [Act III, scene v]:
      […] But then the mind much ſufferance doth or'e ſcip, / When griefe hath mates,and bearing fellowſhip : / How light and portable my paine ſeemes now, / When that which makes me bend, makes the King bow, / He childed as I fathered,Tom away, / Marke the high noyſes and thy ſelfe bewray, […]
    • 1686 [1600], Edward Fairfax, transl., chapter XVIII, in Godfrey of Bulloigne: Or, The Recovery of Jerusalem‎[2], 26, page 539:
      And from his fertile hollow Womb forth ran, / (Clad in rare Weeds and ſtrange Habiliment) / A Nymph for Age able to go to Man, / An hundred Plants beſide (Even in his ſight) / Childed an hundred Nymphs, ſo great, ſo dight.

Translations[edit]

to give birth — see give birth

Further reading[edit]

Middle English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old English ċild, from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

child (plural children or childre or child or childres)

  1. A baby, infant, toddler; a person in infancy.
  2. A child, kid; a young person.
  3. An offspring, one of one's progeny.
  4. A childish or stupid individual.
  5. (Chrisitanity) The Christ child; Jesus as a child.
  6. (figurative) A member of a creed (usually with the religion in the genitive preposing it)
  7. A young male, especially one employed as an hireling.
  8. A young noble training to become a knight; a squire or childe.
  9. The young of animals or plants.
  10. A material as a result or outcome.

Related terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

  • English: child
  • Scots: child; chield

References[edit]

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