stripling
Plural: striplings
Noun
- a juvenile between the onset of puberty and maturity
- A young man in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad. .
- A seedling with most of the leaves stripped off.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English stripling (“an adolescent, a youth (specifically one who is male); a child”) [and other forms], possibly from strepen (“to remove the clothes of, undress, strip; to peel off; to skin (an animal); to remove; to take something away from someone; to plunder, rob”) (connoting something that is stripped and thin, and yet to reach its full size) + -ling (suffix forming diminutives). Strepen is derived from Old English *strēpan (Anglian), *strīepan, *strīpan, *strȳpan (West Saxon), from Proto-West Germanic *straupijan, from Proto-Germanic *straupijaną (“to strip; to pluck; to wipe”), from *streupaną (“to touch”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *strew-, *sterw-, *ster- (“a strip; a streak; a beam, ray”)) + *-janą (suffix forming causatives from strong verbs with the sense of ‘to cause to do’). The English word is analysable as strip (“long, narrow piece”) + -ling.
Synonyms
adolescent, teen, teenager, bhoy, boy, boykin, boyo, callant, chav, feely-omi, guy, knave, lad, little boy, man child, manling, page, pillicock, sapling, shaveling, son, sonny, springald, stripling, yob, younker, youth
Scrabble Score: 12
stripling: valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordstripling: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
stripling: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary