These, words denote young people of the ages between childhood and maturity. Youth , now a rather old-fashioned word, is applied to young males almost exclusively, especially those in their teens or early twenties: a callow youth ; to go to sea as a youth . As a collective, youth denotes young persons as a group, both male and female: the youth of a nation; the flower of our country’s youth died at Gallipoli.

Adolescent and teenager both designate a person from the age of 13 to 19. Adolescent is a more formal term than teenager and may simply to be used in the chronological sense: a course in safe driving for adolescents ; to have three adolescent daughters. In an extended sense, adolescent connotes the awkwardness, the rapid growth and the emotional upheavals of this period of life. When used of an adult of any age, adolescent is a disparaging term and emphasizes immaturity in behaviour or thinking. Teenager has gained wide acceptance since World War II, especially as points to the period approaching young adulthood, teenager emphasizes an age group which more and more deliberately sets itself apart from the adult world and which has its own standards of conduct, its own fashions, its own entertainments and even its own argot.

Young man and young woman tend to be relative terms, since their use sometimes depends upon the age of the person who says or writes them. In general, it may be assumed that a young man and a young woman are persons roughly between adolescence and the age of 35. In a playful or scolding way, young man is frequently used in addressing small boys: young man , wash those dirty hands. "Yong lady ," rather than young woman , is used of girls in the same way.