child

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See also: Child and Child.

English[edit]

A woman with two children c. 1933.

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English child, from Old English ċild (“fetus; female baby; child”), from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz (“womb; fetus”), from Proto-Indo-European *g(')elt- (“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”).

Pronunciation[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); (obsolete, specifically) a female child, a girl.
    • Shakespeare
      A boy or a child, I wonder?
    • 1876, "C" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. IV, p. 616:
      Our English ch (pronounced tch) for original c (as in chin for Old English cin, child for cild) is due probably to Norman influence, but here, as often, it is difficult to differentiate the results of the many disturbing causes which have operated upon our language.
    Go easy on him: he is but a child.
  2. (with possessive) One's son or daughter, regardless of age.
    My youngest child is forty-three.
  3. (with possessive) One's descendants, regardless of age.
    The children of Israel.
  4. (figuratively) 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.
      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.
      Poverty, disease, and despair are the children of war.
      • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, 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).

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]

Terms derived from child

Related terms[edit]

See also[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

References[edit]

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