Other forms: youngsters
A youngster is a child or a young person. A group of youngsters, the youngsters today, a promising youngster.
It is warm and slightly dated and is used most by people a great deal older. In sport it is the standard word for a player breaking into a first team.
1nounyoungsterA child or a young person.
“The club runs free football training for local youngsters on Saturdays.”
youngster is a child.
Young plus -ster, attested from the early seventeenth century.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ey-
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂yuHn̥ḱós
Proto-Germanic
*jungaz
Proto-West Germanic
*jung
Old English
ġeong
Middle English
yong
English
young
English, today
youngster
Built from
From young + -ster. Attested from the early 17th century. young Inherited from Middle English yong, yonge, from Old English ġeong, from Proto-West Germanic jung, from Proto-Germanic jungaz, from Proto-Indo-European h₂yuHn̥ḱós, from h₂yuh₁en- (“young”). 2 Cognate with gsw jung, jungu, junhs, jungà, jòng (“young”), bar junk (“young”), gmw-cfr -, lb jonk (“young”), cim djung, jung, junk (“young”), Dutch jong (“young”), German -, German Low German -, mhn - and wym jung (“young”), li jong, jonk (“young”), Yiddish יונג (“young”), Danish -, Norwegian Bokmål -, Norwegian Nynorsk - and Swedish ung (“young”), Faroese -, Icelandic ungur (“young”), Gothic 𐌾𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍃 (“young”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA