Word.ws English Dictionary

preadolescence

preadolescence noun: the period between childhood and adolescence, between the ages of about nine and eleven for girls, and ten and twelve for boys.

Noun

preadolescence (uncountable)

  1. The period between childhood and adolescence, between the ages of about nine and eleven for girls, and ten and twelve for boys.
    • Jojo gains what Pop’s lost of his bearing. First, a brace across his thighs, all the bowlegged softness of his preadolescence dissolved to a granite stance.2017, Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Bloomsbury Circus, page 270

Origin of preadolescence

From pre- + adolescence.

Questions about preadolescence

What does preadolescence mean?
Preadolescence means the period between childhood and adolescence, between the ages of about nine and eleven for girls, and ten and twelve for boys.
What part of speech is preadolescence?
Preadolescence is a noun.

Words near preadolescence in the dictionary

  1. preadmonished
  2. preadmonishes
  3. preadmonishing
  4. preadmonition
  5. preadmonitions
  6. preadolescence
  7. preadolescent
  8. preadolescents
  9. preadopt
  10. preadopted
  11. preadopting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preadolescence (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: “preadolescence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preadolescence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.