second childhood
noun
Simple meaning
The period or state of cognitive decline of an elderly person, having childlike judgment and behavior.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sehkuhndchyldhuudSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɛkəndˈtʃaɪldhʊd
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
idiomatic
The period or state of cognitive decline of an elderly person, characterized by childlike judgment and behavior.
idiomatic
A childlike state in any adult, resulting from mental illness, trauma, or other conditions.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The period or state of cognitive decline of an elderly person, characterized by childlike judgment and behavior.
Used this way, second childhood is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
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.