Word.ws English Dictionary

elderspeak

elderspeak noun: a simplified, patronizing speech style used by younger adults when addressing elderly people.

Noun

elderspeak (uncountable)

  1. A simplified, patronizing speech style used by younger adults when addressing elderly people.
    • In this case, the “communicative predicament of aging” is that elderspeak led to a decrease in the older adults' self-ratings of communicative competence yet it also improved their performance on the referential communication tasks.1998, Norbert Schwarz, Cognition, Aging and Self-Reports, page 193

Origin of elderspeak

From elder + -speak.

Questions about elderspeak

What does elderspeak mean?
Elderspeak means a simplified, patronizing speech style used by younger adults when addressing elderly people.
What part of speech is elderspeak?
Elderspeak is a noun.

Words near elderspeak in the dictionary

  1. Elderon
  2. elders
  3. eldership
  4. elderships
  5. Elderslie
  6. elderspeak
  7. elderwed
  8. elderweds
  9. elderwoman
  10. elderwomen
  11. elderwood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elderspeak (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “elderspeak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elderspeak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.