children
English edit
Alternative forms edit
- childer (archaic, except in Ireland)
- childs (nonstandard, rare)
- chillen, chillun, chirren (eye dialect)
Etymology edit
From Middle English children, alteration of earlier childre ("children"; > English dialectal childer), from Old English ċildru, ċildra (“children”), nominative and accusative plural of ċild (“child”), equivalent to child + -ren.
Pronunciation edit
- (UK, US, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/
- (Southern American English, AAVE) IPA(key): [tʃɪl.ɹən]
- (General American, Canada) IPA(key): [ˈt͡ʃɪl.d̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]
Audio (US) (file)
- (UK dialectal, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃʊldɹən/
- (General Australian) IPA(key): [ˈt͡ʃʊld̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]
- (Hong Kong) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/, (proscribed) /ˈt͡ʃɪl.dən/
- Rhymes: -ɪldɹən, -ʊldɹən
- Hyphenation: chil‧dren
Noun edit
children
- plural of child.
- 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
- Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.
Anagrams edit
Middle English edit
Etymology edit
From childre (“children”) with a pleonastic addition of the plural suffix -en; compare calveren, eyren, lambren.
Noun edit
children