youth

Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.

1910, Emerson Hough, “The Purchase Price”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

Feel awfully about Scott... It was a terrible thing for him to love youth so much that he jumped straight from youth to senility without going through manhood. The minute he felt youth going he was frightened again and thought there was nothing between youth and age.

1936 Feb. 15, Ernest Hemingway, letter to Maxwell Perkins

Her youth and beauty attracted him to her.

(uncountable) The quality or state of being young.

Make the most of your youth, it will not last forever.

I made many mistakes in my youth, but learned from them all.

I don't find the pose of careless youth charming and engaging any more than you find the pose of careworn age fascinating and eccentric, I should imagine.

1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 2, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, →OCLC, section I, page 35:

Toward the end of the war, Benoit was sent off on his own with forged papers; he wound up working as a horse groom at a chalet in the Loire valley. Mandelbrot describes this harrowing youth with great sangfroid.

2013 January 20, Brian Hayes, “Father of Fractals”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 62:

(uncountable) The part of life following childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to adulthood.

There was a group of youths hanging around the parking lot, reading fashion magazines and listening to music.

[…]and then a youth appeared—no one quite knew where from or to whom he belonged—but he settled down with them in a happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived together.

1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 274–275:

(countable) A young man; a male adolescent or young adult.

(uncountable, used with a plural or singular verb) Young persons, collectively.

en-noun

youth (countable and uncountable, plural youths)

From Middle English youthe, youghte, ȝouþe, from Old English ġeoguþ (“the state of being young; youth”), from Proto-West Germanic *juwunþa, from Proto-Germanic *jugunþō, *jugunþiz (“youth”), corresponding to young + -th. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Juugd, West Frisian jeugd, Dutch jeugd, German Low German Jöögd, German Jugend.


youth

(Late Middle English) Alternative form of youthe