child

noun

1. (broadly)A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority).

   “Go easy on him: he is but a child.”

   “And not just the children, teenagers too. Chuck wants a football, Kathleen a tattoo.”

   “It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.”

   “In one case, a mother was deported and took her 2-year-old child with her, while the other involves another mother deported and her 4- and 7-year-old children went with her, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Project, among other organizations, said in a news release Friday.”

   “Regular chores can be appropriate for children, given age-appropriate limits on difficulty level and time on task.”

2. (broadly, sometimes)A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority).
3. One's direct descendant by birth, regardless of age; one's offspring; a son or daughter.

   “My youngest child is forty-three this year.”

   “His adult children visit him yearly.”

4. The thirteenth Lenormand card.
5. (figuratively)A figurative offspring

   “the children of Israel”

   “He is a child of his times.”

   “For more than forty years, he preached the creed of art and beauty. He was heir to the ancient wisdom of Israel, a child of Germany, a subject of Great Britain, later an American citizen, but in truth a citizen of the world.”

   “Plash-Goo was of the children of the giants, whose sire was Uph. And the lineage of Uph had dwindled in bulk for the last five hundred years, till the giants were now no more than fifteen foot high; but Uph ate elephants[…]”

6. (figuratively)A figurative offspring

   “Poverty, disease, and despair are the children of war.”

7. (figuratively)A figurative offspring

   “The child node then stores the actual data of the parent node.”

   “The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf).”

8. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of childe (“youth of noble birth”).
9. A subordinate node of a tree.
10. (figuratively)An adult or adolescent with childish or stupid behaviors.

    “My husband is such a child, going out with his sled everytime it snows.”

11. (obsolete, specifically)A female child, a girl.

    “A boy, or a Childe I wonder?”

12. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of child often used when referring to God (Jesus) or another important child who is understood from context.

    “He appeared as an only begotten Child, as a Child calling us to be children also, and yet with this difference, that He and His Father maintained a holy intimacy with each other which no one dared to share.”

    “This emendation is echoed in Thekla's reunion with Paul outside the city, where she offers the following prayer of thanksgiving: God, King and Blessed Creator of everything, and Father of your great and only begotten Child, I give you thanks.”

verb

1. (ambitransitive, archaic)To give birth; to beget or procreate.

   “My liefe (ſayd ſhe) ye know, that long ygo, Whileſt ye in durance dwelt, ye to me gaue A little mayde, the which ye chylded tho ; The ſame againe if now ye liſt to haue, The ſame is yonder Lady, whom high God did ſaue.”

   “And from his fertill hollow wombe forth ran, (Clad in rare weedes and ſtrange habiliment) A Nymph, for age able to goe to man, An hundreth plants beſide (euen in his ſight) Childed an hundreth Nymphes, ſo great, ſo dight:[…]”

   “[…]But then the mind much ſufferance doth or'e ſcip, When griefe hath mates,and bearing fellowſhip : How light and portable my paine ſeemes now, When that which makes me bend, makes the King bow, He childed as I fathered,Tom away, Marke the high noyſes and thy ſelfe bewray,[…]”

name

1. A surname.