Dictionary

youngness en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English young Proto-Germanic *-inōną Proto-Indo-European *-dyé- Proto-Germanic *-atjaną Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Germanic *-þuz Proto-Germanic *-assuz Proto-Germanic *-inassuz Proto-West Germanic *-nassī Old English -nes Middle English -nesse English -ness English youngness From young + -ness.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The state or qualities of being young or youthful; youth.
   • […] he was conscious of a feeling which independently pronounced him her senior in point of Time, and Isabel a child of everlasting youngness. 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
   • I was eight years older than Arthur, and our affair had started as a crazy fling with all the beauty for me of his youngness and blackness. 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 2, in The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN:
   • The puppy room in the basement brimmed with youngness, with suckings, cuddlings, lickings, squirmings—puppies whose eyes were sealed against seeing, puppies whose ears were sealed against hearing for the first ten days of life […] 1944, Emily Carr, “Puppy Room”, in The House of All Sorts:

Forms