growing pains
noun
Simple meaning
Emotional distress arising during adolescence.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
grohihngpaynzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɹoʊɪŋpeɪnz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Emotional distress arising during adolescence
Emotional or social problems associated with adolescence
by extension
Difficulties that arise in the early stages of any project
Generalized pains in the limbs or joints of children or adolescents (from many causes)
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Emotional distress arising during adolescence
Used this way, growing pains is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It sounds natural in ordinary conversation and in expressive writing alike.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.