English

Noun

stripling ‎(plural striplings)

1. (archaic) A youth in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad.
   • 1749, John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

     Figure to yourself, Madam, a fair stripling, between eighteen and nineteen, with his head reclin'd on one of the sides of the chair, his hair in disorder'd curls, irregularly shading a face on which all the roseate bloom of youth and all the manly graces conspired to fix my eyes and heart. Even the languor and paleness of his face, in which the momentary triumph of the lily over the rose was owing to the excesses of the night, gave an inexpressible sweetness to the finest features imaginable

   • 1879: Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Chapter 6

     For there, upon the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs.

Translations

References

• stripling in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913