young

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English yong, yonge, from Old English ġeong, from Proto-West Germanic *jung, from Proto-Germanic *jungaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂yuh₁n̥ḱós, from *h₂yuh₁en- (“young”).

adj

1. In the early part of growth or life; born not long ago.
   Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! October 26 1809, William Wordsworth, “The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement”, in Friend, No. 11, ll. 4-5
   What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished society. 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
   I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
   Irregular bedtimes may disrupt healthy brain development in young children, according to a study of intelligence and sleeping habits. ¶ Going to bed at a different time each night affected girls more than boys, but both fared worse on mental tasks than children who had a set bedtime, researchers found. 2013-07-19, Ian Sample, “Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 34
   a lamb is a young sheep; these picture books are for young readers
2. At an early stage of existence or development; having recently come into existence.
   the age of space travel is still young; a young business
   […] while the Fears of the People were young, they were encreas’d strangely by several odd Accidents […] 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt et al, page 23
3. (Not) advanced in age; (far towards or) at a specified stage of existence or age.
   And thou, our Mother, twice two centuries young, Bend with bright shafts of truth thy bow fresh-strung. 1906, Robertson Nicoll, Tis Forty Years Since, quoted in T. P.'s Weekly, volume 8, page 462
   How young is your dog? Her grandmother turned 70 years young last month.
4. Junior (of two related people with the same name).
   The young Mr. Chester must be in the wrong, and the old Mr. Chester must be in the right. 1841, The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
5. (of a decade of life) Early.
   1922, E. Barrington, “The Mystery of Stella” in “The Ladies!” A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, pp. 40-41, […] Miss Hessy is as pretty a girl as eye can see, in her young twenties and a bit of a fortune to boot.
   Ephraim would be in his young thirties. 1965, Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate, London: Macmillan, Part One, Chapter 1
   […] while this may appeal to older, better-off shoppers, vast numbers, especially those in their teens and young twenties, still want fast, cheap fashion. 20 January 2008, Alice Fisher, “Grown-up chic is back as high street goes upmarket”, in The Guardian
6. Youthful; having the look or qualities of a young person.
   Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food. 2013-08-03, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
   My grandmother is a very active woman and is quite young for her age.
7. Of or belonging to the early part of life.
   The cynical world soon shattered my young dreams.
8. (obsolete) Having little experience; inexperienced; unpracticed; ignorant; weak.

noun

1. (often as if a plural noun) Offspring, especially the immature offspring of animals.
   The lion caught a gnu to feed its young.
   The lion's young are curious about the world around them.
   There is a logic in this behavior: a mother will not come into breeding condition again unless her young is ready to be weaned or has died, so killing a baby may hasten […] 2010, Mammal Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide, page 21

verb

1. (informal or demography) To become or seem to become younger.
   The aging (or younging) of a population refers to the fact that a population, as a unit of observation, is getting older (or younger). 1993, Jacob S. Siegel, A Generation of Change, page 5
2. (informal or demography) To cause to appear younger.
   Medicare data was "younged" by a month to achieve conformity with the conventional completed ages recorded in the census. 1984, US Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, page 74
3. (geology) To exhibit younging.
   Shoshonitic magmatism younged southwards in the Superior Province, commensurate with the southwardly diachronous accretion of allochthonous subprovinces. 1994, R. Kerrich, D.A. Wyman, “The mesothermal gold-lamprophyre association”, in Mineralogy and Petrology, →DOI
   The existence of magmatic belts younging northward implies that slabs of Asian mantle subducted one after another under ranges north of the Himalayas. November 23, 2001, Paul Tapponnier et al., “Oblique Stepwise Rise and Growth of the Tibet Plateau”, in Science, volume 294, number 5547, →DOI, pages 1671–1677