• stripling •
Pronunciation: strip-ling • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Boy, youth, lad, teenager, or young male adult; a youngster. 2. (Horticulture) A seedling stripped of its leaves.
Notes: Today's is a rather odd word since it usually refers to a fully clothed youth though it coincidentally implies otherwise. It is accompanied by no derivational relatives.
In Play: We will meet this word more often in historical documents where it is frequently used in contrast to an adult man: "Ivan the Terrible was a mere stripling when he overheard his relatives plotting to kill his mother." But it is also useful around the house: "When I was but a stripling, I was a girl magnet, but now that magnet's charge has reversed itself."
Word History: Today's Good Word is obviously a derivation consisting of strip + -ling, a suffix usually referring to a young or small thing, like earthling, foundling, fledgling, and seedling. Many more were available in Old English, like deathling, fatling, and firstling. Today's word reached the peak of its frequency in the 1840s (1/million). It originally referred to a young tree stripped of its leaves, just before it is transplanted. Strip is also a noun meaning "something with every nonessential removed, a strip, a band". It comes from PIE stre-/ster- "a strip, streak, beam, ray", underlying Danish strimmel "strip", Swedish stripa "strip", Icelandic stryk "stroke", Irish strioc "stripe, streak", Welsh streipen "stripe" and stripio "(to) strip", Russian strug "plane, planning tool", German Streifen "stripe", and English strip and stripe. (Now for an April "thank-you" to Diane McQuire for rescuing this fetching Good Word from the grips of time by sharing it with us.)
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