teen

¹

[ teen ]

adjective

1. teenage.

noun

1. a teenager.

teen

²

[ teen ]

noun

1. Archaic. suffering; grief.
2. Obsolete. injury; harm.

-teen

³

1. a suffix used to form cardinal numerals from 13 to 19.

-teen

¹

combining form

1. ten: added to modified forms of the numbers 3 to 9 to form the numbers 13 to 19

teen

²

/ tiːn /

adjective

1. See teenage
   informal.
   another word for teenage

teen

³

/ tiːn /

noun

1. obsolete.
   affliction or woe

Derived Forms

• -teenth, combining_form:in_adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of teen¹

First recorded in 1940–45; by shortening

Origin of teen²

before 1000; Middle English tene, Old English tēona; cognate with Old Frisian tiona, Old Saxon tiono, Old Norse tjōn

Origin of teen³

Middle English, Old English -tēne, combining form of ten; cognate with Dutch -tien, German -zehn

Word History and Origins

Origin of teen¹

Old English -tēne, -tӯne

Origin of teen²

Old English tēona; related to Old Saxon tiono, Old Frisian tiona injury

Example Sentences

A teen who FaceTimes with her grandparents or does homework online for an hour is having a very different experience than someone who sits alone and watches an action movie or plays Fortnite for that hour.

From Science News For Students

Still other schools are letting students in, and parents can choose whether to send their kids and teens.

From Science News For Students

To be sure, many Gen Zers continue to view working in their teens as valuable experience.

From Ozy

TikTok teens along with Korean pop fans claim to have registered for hundreds of thousands of tickets so that the arena’s seats would remain empty.

From Fortune

Says Romeo, this may mean the teen brain responds better to interventions that didn’t work during childhood.

From Science News For Students

Yes, it was a fairly disappointing year in music—one devoid of Goth teen prodigies, Yeezy, and galvanizing rock anthems.

From The Daily Beast

The reigning queen of hip-hop treads the boards in her teen years.

From The Daily Beast

Growing up as a teen in the 1960s, she had yearned to wear the same clothes her girlfriends wore.

From The Daily Beast

As a teen, she wowed in films like Donnie Darko and Saved!

From The Daily Beast

If the ongoing Hollywood scandal were a teen thriller from the 90s.

From The Daily Beast

In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor of children nine years of age to four-teen hours a day.

From Project Gutenberg

She seemed to be more like a somewhat bashful teen-ager who had been educated in a convent.

From Project Gutenberg

Expone e too versus afore: this present craft ys called Algorismus, in e quych we vse teen signys of Inde.

From Project Gutenberg

But he vndirstondes e first figure at is in e nombur of e forsayd teen figuris, e quych is one of ese.

From Project Gutenberg

I once visited in a home where a teen-age girl was having one of her frequent “tragic” love experiences.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• juvenile
• youngster