Word.ws English Dictionary

grownup

grownup is the alternative form of grown-up.

Meaning of grown-up

Noun

grown-up (plural grown-ups)

  1. (childish, often) An adult.
    • They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 9

See all 4 meanings of grown-up

Forms of grownup

Noun
pluralgrownups
Adjective
comparativemore grownup
superlativemost grownup

Words formed from grownup

Questions about grownup

What is grownup the alternative form of?
Grownup is the alternative form of grown-up.

Words near grownup in the dictionary

  1. grownds
  2. growne
  3. grownies
  4. grownish
  5. grownt
  6. grownup
  7. grownupness
  8. grownups
  9. growroom
  10. growrooms
  11. grows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grownup (page history and authors); grown-up (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-grownup.wav.

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