teenager orig. U.S.
(ˈtiːneɪdʒə(r))
Also teen-ager.
[f. prec. + -er1.]
One who is in his or her teens; loosely, an adolescent.
| 1941 Pop. Sci. Monthly Apr. 223/2, I never knew teen-agers could be so serious. 1947 Auden Age of Anxiety (1948) i. 26 Tops in tests by teen-agers. 1952 M. Steen Phoenix Rising ii. 38 Do we have to behave like a couple of hysterical 'teen-agers? 1960 K. Amis Take Girl like You xxii. 260 Jenny thought to herself that here she was nearly twenty-one, and instead of having been a teenager all she had managed to do was spend a certain amount of time getting from the age of twelve to the age of twenty. 1962 Guardian 21 Sept. 11/7 He must be constantly new and different to be able to please the younger teenagers. And ‘teenagers’ start at the age of nine. 1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 15 Aug. 908/1 Teenagers, of course, had not been invented in the 1880s. |