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teen

nounadjectivenounverbverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈtiːn//
  • /[ˈtʰɪi̯n]/

Synonym of teenager: a person between 13 and 19 years old (inclusive).

noun

  1. 1

    Synonym of teenager: a person between 13 and 19 years old (inclusive).

    In the safety alert, the NTSB educates parents on the risks and outlines what they can do to protect their teens against marijuana-impaired driving.

    Europeans have more success with generational outreach, but they start with younger age groups and provide a greater variety of all-youth activities. Rather than giving up hope, the YCN redirected its focus from teens to twens, particularly ...

    We found that teen drivers and the public largely misunderstand the legal status of cannabis use and do not fully recognize the risks of cannabis-impaired driving.

  2. 2

    A black teenager or a young black person.

Etymology

Clipping of teenager. For more synonyms see at Thesaurus:teenager.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or having to do with teenagers; teenage

    teen fashion

noun

  1. 1

    archaicGrief; sorrow; trouble.

    In which the birds song many a lovely lay / Of Gods high praise, and of their loves sweet teene, / As it an earthly Paradize had beene […]

    The Soldan changed hue for grief and teen, / On that sad book his shame and loss he lear'd.

    Miranda: O my heart bleedes / To thinke oth' teene that I haue turn'd you to, / Which is from my remembrance,[…]

    She entereth with mickle teen; Within it light ne found she none; Thorow it still she goeth on, Until she from the hill issued In a fair meadow, rich and good.

  2. 2

    archaicVexation; anger; hate.

Etymology

From Middle English tene, from Old English tēona, tēone, *tēon, from Proto-West Germanic *teun, from Proto-Germanic *teuną.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo excite; to provoke; to vex; to afflict; to injure.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo become angry or distressed.

    Þenne tened hym theologye · whan he þis tale herde

Etymology

From Middle English tenen, from Old English tēonian, tȳnan (“to vex, annoy, provoke”), from Proto-West Germanic *tiunijan, from Proto-Germanic *tiunijaną.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo close, to shut; to enclose, to hedge or fence in.

    Hie tho' off […] or th' dur may be teen'd.

    It is still heard in Devon , especially by older dialect speakers, in such expressions as “I'an't a-teen'd my eyes all night”; “Teen the door, will ' e?”

    She whimpered and whined about it till, in self-defence, I rose up and teened the candle and got into my breeches.

Etymology

From Middle English tenen, tinen, from Old English tȳnan (“to fence, inclose, shut, close”), from Proto-West Germanic *tūnijan, from Proto-West Germanic *tūn, from Proto-Germanic *tūną (“fence, enclosure”). Doublet of tine. Cognate with Dutch tuinen, German zäunen. Related to English town.

Forms

plural
teens
past tense
teened
past participle
teened
present participle
teening
third person singular
teens
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).