different between child vs pickaninny

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: ch?ld, ch???ld, IPA^(key): /t??a?ld/, /?t??a?.?ld/
• Rhymes: -a?ld

Etymology 1

From Middle English child, from Old English ?ild (“fetus; female baby; child”), from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz (“womb; fetus”), from Proto-Indo-European *?elt- (“womb”). Cognate with Danish kuld (“brood, litter”), Swedish kull (“brood, litter”), Icelandic kelta, kjalta (“lap”), Gothic ???????????????????????? (kilþei, “womb”), Sanskrit ???? (jarta), ????? (jártu, “vulva”).

Alternative forms

• childe (archaic)
• (plural): childrens (intentionally incorrect, nonstandard); childs (nonstandard, rare)

Noun

child (plural children or (dialectal or archaic) childer)

1. A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority)
2. (obsolete, specifically) A female child, a girl.
3. (with possessive) One's direct descendant by birth, regardless of age; a son or daughter.

4. (cartomancy) The thirteenth Lenormand card.
5. (figuratively) A figurative offspring, particularly:
   1. A person considered a product of a place or culture, a member of a tribe or culture, regardless of age.
   2. Anything derived from or caused by something.
   3. (computing) A data item, process, or object which has a subservient or derivative role relative to another.
      • 2011, John Mongan, Noah Kindler, Eric Giguère, Programming Interviews Exposed:

        The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf).

6. Alternative form of childe (“youth of noble birth”)
7. (mathematics) A subordinate node of a tree

Synonyms

• (young person): See Thesaurus:child, Thesaurus:boy, & Thesaurus:girl
• (offspring): See offspring and Thesaurus:son and Thesaurus:daughter, binary clone, progeny, hybrid
• (descendant): See descendant
• (product of a place or era): product, son (male), daughter (female)

Antonyms

• (daughter or son): father, mother, parent
• (person below the age of adulthood): adult
• (data item, process or object in a subordinate role): parent

Derived terms

Related terms

• chield
• Child
• childe
• Childermas

Translations

See also

• orling

Etymology 2

From Middle English childen, from the noun child.

Verb

child (third-person singular simple present childs, present participle childing, simple past and past participle childed)

1. (archaic, transitive, intransitive) To give birth; to beget or procreate.

Translations

Further reading

• Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary (accessed November 2007).
• American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company (2003).

Middle English

Alternative forms

• chyld, chylde, childe, chelde, cild

Etymology

From Old English ?ild, from Proto-Germanic *kelþaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?i?ld/

Noun

child (plural children or childre or child or childres)

1. A baby, infant, toddler; a person in infancy.
2. A child, kid; a young person.
3. An offspring, one of one's progeny.
4. A childish or stupid individual.
5. (Chrisitanity) The Christ child; Jesus as a child.
6. (figuratively) A member of a creed (usually with the religion in the genitive preposing it)
7. A young male, especially one employed as an hireling.
8. A young noble training to become a knight; a squire or childe.
9. The young of animals or plants.
10. A material as a result or outcome.

Related terms

Descendants

• English: child
• Scots: child; chield

References

• “ch?ld, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-23.

English

Alternative forms

• piccaninny, picaninny, picinniny, pikinini
• piccanin (South Africa, Australia)
• pickny (chiefly Caribbean)

Etymology

Probably from a Portuguese pidgin, from Portuguese pequenino (“boy, child”), noun use of pequenino (“tiny”), from pequeno (“small”). In South African uses probably partly after Afrikaans pikenien.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p?k?n?ni/

Noun

pickaninny (plural pickaninnies)

1. (colloquial, now offensive, ethnic slur) A black child. [from 17th c.]
   • 1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther 1974, p. 134:

     A small white donkey glimmered into sight, and behind it a milk cart, rattling its cans, and behind that ran a small and ragged piccaninny, a child of perhaps seven years, whose teeth were rattling so loudly they sounded like falling pebbles even across the width of the garden.

   • 1978, André Brink, Rumours of Rain, Vintage 2000, p. 57:

     And then one boy came back into the water to help me, a Black piccanin, I believe his name was Mpilo […] .

   • 2011, Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence, NYU Press (?ISBN), page 34:

     The pickaninny was an imagined, subhuman black juvenile who was typically depicted outdoors, merrily accepting (or even inviting) violence. The word (alternatively spelled “picaninny” or “piccaninny”) dates to the seventeenth century, […]

Derived terms

• pickney

Descendants

• Bajan: pickney
• Bislama: pikinini
• Jamaican Creole: pickney
• Kriol: biginini
• Pijin: pikinini
• Torres Strait Creole: biginini, piknini
• Tok Pisin: pikinini

Translations

Adjective

pickaninny (not comparable)

1. (now rare) Little, small. [from 18th c.]
   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:pickaninny.

Further reading

• pickaninny on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed (1889) (confirms that the adjective meaning "little" is used in Australia)