youth

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The condition or quality of being young.
2. n. An early period of development or existence: a nation in its youth.
3. n. The time of life between childhood and maturity.
4. n. A young person, especially a young male in late adolescence.
5. n. Young people considered as a group.
6. n. Geology The first stage in the erosion cycle.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The condition of being young; youthfulness; youngness; juvenility.
2. n. The age from puberty up to the attainment of full growth. In a general sense, youth denotes the whole early part of life, from infancy to maturity; but it is not unusual to divide the stages of life into infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood. Thus limited, youth includes that early period of manhood or womanhood upon which one enters at puberty, with the establishment of the sexual functions, and in which one continues until the skeleton is completely ossified by the consolidation of the epiphyses of the long bones, so that there is no further increase in stature, and all the teeth are in permanent functional position.
3. n. A young person; especially, a young man. In this sense it has a plural.
4. n. Young persons collectively.
5. n. Recentness; freshness; brief date.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The quality or state of being young.
2. n. uncountable The part of life following childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood.
3. n. countable A young person
4. n. countable A young man
5. n. uncountable (used in plural form) Young persons, collectively.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The quality or state of being young; youthfulness; juvenility.
2. n. The part of life that succeeds to childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood.
3. n. A young person; especially, a young man.
4. n. Young persons, collectively.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the time of life between childhood and maturity
2. n. a young person (especially a young man or boy)
3. n. an early period of development
4. n. the freshness and vitality characteristic of a young person
5. n. young people collectively
6. n. early maturity; the state of being young or immature or inexperienced