children

English

Children.

Alternative forms

• childer (archaic, except in Ireland)
• childs (nonstandard, rare)
• chillen, chillun, chirren (eye dialect)

Etymology

From Middle English children, alteration of earlier childre ("children"; > English dialectal childer), from Old English ċildru, ċildra (“children”), nominative and accusative plural of ċild (“child”), equivalent to child +‎ -ren.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/
  • (Southern US, African-American Vernacular) IPA^(key): [tʃɪl.ɹən]
  • (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃɪl.d̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (UK dialectal, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃʊldɹən/
  • (General Australian) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃʊld̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]
• (Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/, (proscribed) /ˈt͡ʃɪl.dən/
• Rhymes: -ɪldɹən, -ʊldɹən
• Hyphenation: chil‧dren

Noun

children

1. plural of child
   • 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:

     Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

2. plural of childer

Derived terms

• antichildren
• childrenless
• childrenswear
• choke-children
• knuckle children

 

Anagrams

• childern

Middle English

Etymology

From childre (“children”) with a pleonastic addition of the plural suffix -en; compare calveren, eyren, lambren.

Noun

children

1. plural of child