precocious

UK/pɹəˈkəʊʃəs/US/pɹəˈkəʊʃəs/

adjectiveC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,793 of 15,258neutral

Precocious means developing skills far earlier than is usual. A precocious child, precocious talent, precociously gifted.

It is praise with a faint edge, since precocious children are often described by adults who found them tiring. The Latin means ripening early, from a word about fruit, and the apricot is a distant relative through the same root.

Definitions of precocious

1adjectiveprecociousDeveloping skills far earlier than is usual.C2
“The precocious child was reading newspapers by the age of three.”

precocious is a quality.

Remember it

The Latin is prae, before, and coquo, to cook: the same cook you use every day. The child is cooked before the season and ready long before the rest.

hooks ontocook

Where it comes from

Latin praecox means ripening early — prae, before, plus coquere, to cook or ripen.

Proto-Indo-European
*pekʷ-
Latin
praecox — premature, precocious, ripe before time, early ripe
English, today
precocious

Built from

praecoquō · Latin — to ripen beforehand, ripen fully, also boil beforehand
prae · Latin — before
coquō · Latin — to cook, boil, ripen

From Latin praecox (“premature, precocious, ripe before time, early ripe”), from praecoquō (“to ripen beforehand, ripen fully, also boil beforehand”), from prae (“before”) + coquō (“to cook, boil, ripen”). a doublet of apricot.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

precocious in the wild

Based on the medical assessments of her pregnancy, she was four years old when she became pregnant, which was biologically possible due to precocious puberty.
Lina Medina
In medicine, precocious puberty is puberty occurring at an unusually early age.
Precocious puberty
In a minority of children with precocious puberty, the early development is triggered by a disease such as a tumor or injury of the brain.
Precocious puberty
Additionally, secondary breast development occurring before the age of 7 years could be a sign of premature thelarche or precocious puberty.
Thelarche
If a pinealoma destroys the cells of the pineal gland in a child, it can cause precocious puberty.
Pinealoma

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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.

Related words

the coquō family

kitchen

precocious — used about once every 7,127 pages · #10,793 · point at the bar for the others

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