toddlerhood

toddlerhood

English

WOTD – 1 June 2022

Etymology

From toddler +‎ -hood (suffix forming nouns denoting conditions or states of being).[1]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɒdl̩əhʊd/, /ˈtɒdləhʊd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɑd(ə)lɚˌhʊd/
• Hyphenation: todd‧ler‧hood

Noun

toddlerhood (usually uncountable, plural toddlerhoods)

1. (countable) The period of one's life in which one is a toddler (“a young child who has started walking but not fully mastered it, typically between one and three years old”). [from early 20th c.]

   Synonym: toddlerdom

   We’ve been friends ever since toddlerhood.

   • 1937, E[leanor] Joyce Partridge [et al.], The Management of Early Infancy, London: C[harles] W[illiam] Daniel, OCLC 12252062, page 25:

     [T]he stage at which mother showed herself to her infant in her true colours was whilst breast feeding was still going on, and any difficulties that belonged to toddlerhood had their roots reaching back to this stage.

   • 2014 December 20, Rebecca Ley, “City versus country childhoods”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, ISSN 0261-3077, OCLC 229952407, archived from the original on 28 April 2021:

     And, like most boring mothers, I fret about schools. Where I grew up, everyone went to the nearest village primary school and the local comprehensive. But here, since the earliest days of Isobel’s toddlerhood, my friends and acquaintances have been engaged in an arms race.

2. (uncountable) The state of being a toddler. [from early 20th c.]

Hypernyms

• childhood

Coordinate terms

• adolescence
• adulthood
• babyhood
• elderhood
• infancy
• infanthood
• oldhood
• teenagehood, teenagerhood
• teenhood
• tweenhood

 

Translations

period of one’s life in which one is a toddler

Azerbaijani: kiçiklik Finnish: taaperoikä

state of being a toddler

Finnish: taaperous

References

1. “toddlerhood, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “toddlerhood, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

• toddler on Wikipedia.Wikipedia