Callants

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Young males typically in their teens or early adulthood; boys or lads often used in historical or regional contexts to refer to youth
2. Youthful males commonly referenced in Scots or Northern English dialects as a term for teenage or adolescent boys
3. Male children or adolescents, especially used in older or dialectal language to denote young men or lads in general

Etymology: "Callants" is the plural of "callant," a word that reached Scots from the Low Countries rather than from anywhere in Britain's older vocabulary. Its ancestor is Middle Dutch "calant," which is still alive in modern Dutch as "klant," meaning "customer." That is a surprise: the Dutch word for a paying customer and the Scots word for a lad turn out to be the same word. The route runs through the French-speaking world. The Middle Dutch form came from "kalant," a word of the Picard dialect of northern France, which in turn descends from Old Northern French "calant." Behind that lies Old French "chaloir," meaning "to heat" and also "to care about." The sense of caring or concern is the thread linking the verb to the noun: a "calant" was, in effect, someone who was caring for, or interested in, something. Over the centuries that concern narrowed in Dutch to the customer who comes to buy, and in Scots to the young man who is always up to something.

Synonyms: boys, lads, youths, youngsters, fellows

Antonyms: men, adults, seniors, elders