Adjective: adolescent
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more adolescent |
| Superlative | most adolescent |
Sample Sentences
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Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong, / Detain their adolescent charge too long. [1785, William Cowper, Tirocinium:]
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Again, voice change is not easy and vulnerability plays a big part, but if choral teachers and adolescent singers approach it with the right mindframe, the experience can be empowering, enlightening, and restorative for all involved. [2019, Bridget Sweet, Thinking Outside the Voice Box, page 71:]
Adjectives inflected like adolescent
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
First attested ?1440, from Middle English adolescent, from Middle French adolescent or directly from Latin adolescentem, accusative form of adolescens, present participle of adolēscere (“to become adult, grow up”), from ad- (“to”) + alēscere (“to grow or become nourished”). The adjective first appeared in 1785.