Yonge

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. An archaic spelling of the adjective meaning being in the early part of life, not yet grown or mature
2. Old form of the word describing a person or creature in the first stage of life, having lived only a short time
3. Archaic variant of the adjective for someone or something of tender age, not long past birth or early growth

Etymology: Before the spelling settled, English writers often wrote "yonge" for what we now write as "young." Chaucer used it, and it reflects the Old English "geong," in which the initial sound was a "y." Over the Middle English centuries, the spelling wandered among "yong," "yonge," and "young," and the form we use today won out only later. The root is shared with a Latin word. Old English "geong" descends from a Germanic form that traces back to an Indo-European root meaning roughly "youth." That same root produced Latin "iuvenis" (young person), which gave English "juvenile," and the comparative "iunior," which gave us "junior." The connection is most visible in those borrowed Latin words, since "young" itself came into English through the Germanic line rather than from Latin.