stripling

Meaning

1. (also, attributive, dated, humorous, sometimes) A young man in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad. .
2. A seedling with most of the leaves stripped off.

Synonyms

youth

lad

teenager

boy

👦

youngster

adolescent

young man

teen

giant

girl

👧

greenhorn

guy

hobbledehoy

huge

juvenile

kid

🧒

laddie

large

little boy

nestling

nipper

sapling

shaver

son

sprout

tiddler

tyke

young fellow

youngling

young woman

younker

Fry

tike

young buck

young shaver

big

blighter

bulky

child

🧒

fella

feller

gawky

Translations

Kind

🧒

Bürschchen

adolescent

Jüngling

rapaz

👦

çocuk

🧒

adolescente

Jüngelchen

έφηβος

jouvenceau

giovinetto

moço

👦

jovencito

Junge

👦

al·lot

👦

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈstɹɪplɪŋ/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: stripling

Inherited from Old English: *strēpan

In summary

From Middle English stripling (“an adolescent, a youth (specifically one who is male); a child”) [and other forms], possibly from strepen (“to remove the clothes of, undress, strip; to peel off; to skin (an animal); to remove; to take something away from someone; to plunder, rob”) (connoting something that is stripped and thin, and yet to reach its full size) + -ling (suffix forming diminutives). Strepen is derived from Old English *strēpan (Anglian), *strīepan, *strīpan, *strȳpan (West Saxon), from Proto-West Germanic *straupijan, from Proto-Germanic *straupijaną (“to strip; to pluck; to wipe”), from *streupaną (“to touch”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *strew-, *sterw-, *ster- (“a strip; a streak; a beam, ray”)) + *-janą (suffix forming causatives from strong verbs with the sense of ‘to cause to do’). The English word is analysable as strip (“long, narrow piece”) + -ling.