Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

adolescence

UK/ˌædəˈlɛsəns/US/ˌædəˈlɛsəns/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,718 of 15,258leans written

Adolescence is the years between child and adult. Through adolescence, late adolescence, the difficulties of adolescence.

Where it ends has moved: the brain's decision-making regions keep developing into the middle twenties, and several countries have raised the age at which care and legal treatment change to match. Puberty is the physical part and adolescence is the whole passage.

SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget · CC BY 2.0

Definitions of adolescence

  1. 1nounadolescenceThe years between child and adult.B2+

    “He spent much of his adolescence arguing with his parents and sleeping late.”

adolescence is a stage of life.

Where it comes from

Latin adolescentia comes from adolescere, to grow up. Adult is the past participle of the same verb.

  1. Latin

    adolēscentia

  2. Old French

    adolescence

  3. Middle English

    adolescence

  4. English, today

    adolescence

Built from

  • adolēscēns · Latin — young

From Middle English adolescence, from Old French adolescence, from Latin adolēscentia, from adolēscēns (“young”); see adolescent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Family & People

Practise this word

adolescence in the wild

  • Age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have not agreed upon a precise definition.

    Adolescence

  • In medicine and the social sciences, a young adult is generally a person in the years following adolescence, sometimes with some overlap.

    Young adult

  • Although cliques are most commonly studied during adolescence and in educational settings, they can exist in all age groups and settings.

    Adolescent clique

  • Alcoholism in adolescence, though less common than in adults, presents a unique set of dangers due to the developing brain's vulnerability to alcohol's effects.

    Alcoholism in adolescence

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.