By Julie E 
Photo Credit ( Pixabay )
The Whippersnapper
Edgar Allan Poe used the phrase “whippersnapper” in a long tirade from his story “Loss of Breath” to describe a “diminutive, insignificant, or presumptuous person.” If we needed further evidence that this term was not a compliment but rather a term of rebuke, here it is:
“You wretch! You vixen! On the morning following our wedding, I said to my wife, “You witch! You hag! The whipper-snapper you are! You are a cesspool of wickedness! The fiery-faced embodiment of everything that is abhorrent! – thou – thou –”
The story’s speaker then stops, gratifyingly, short of breath.
Whippersnapper is typically used much more subtly, such as by an older person to highlight the young age of the individual being addressed. It appears to have originated from the word “snippersnapper,” which was first used in the late 1500s and had the same meaning. Additionally, it might have been influenced by the word whipster, which Shakespeare used in a similar manner:
Despite its Renaissance roots, Whippersnapper seems familiar and vintage to us because of its peak in popularity in the 1930s.
The mop
Moppet, which means “a young person” or “a child,” is typically used in a cutesy manner. Its root is mop, an archaic English term from the 1300s that denoted “a baby” as well as “a fool.” In the eighteenth century, it was used to derogatorily refer to “a young woman,” “a damsel,” and “an effeminate man” or “a fop.” These meanings are no longer in use. Although we now know that this mop has nothing to do with the mop that means “a tool for cleaning floors,” Samuel Johnson appeared to mix the terms mop and puppet in his 1755 Dictionary, defining them as follows:
Moppet a rag puppet while a mop is being prepared.
It seems that Moppet has nothing to do with Muppet, which Jim Henson claimed was a playful term he coined rather than a combination of the words “marionette” and “puppet.”
The definition of “whiffet” is “a small, young, or unimportant person,” yet the word’s indisputable sweetness appears to have prevented it from becoming a frequent derogatory epithet. In fact, the word’s alternative meaning—”small dog,” which was primarily used in the 19th century—seems to support its adorable tone.
This airy excerpt from an early magazine movie review demonstrates how Whiffet was utilized in casual and comfortable writing:
This is especially true with regard to William Haines. This filmmaker consistently portrays the annoying, impulsive whiffet who ruins plans and creates heartaches with his whimsy.
Whiffet appears to have evolved from the dog breed’s name, whippet.
Both whiffler and whifling are ancient synonyms of whiffet that are used to describe persons, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Younker
The name “younker” is derived from the Dutch word “jonker,” which means “young nobleman.” Younker’s root, the Dutch word jon, is an etymological cousin of young, which explains why it somewhat resembles the English word younger. Another relative is the German borrowing Junker (pronounced \YUN-kur), which can be translated as “a member of the Prussian landed aristocracy” or “a young German noble” in English. The Dutch and German terms are both combinations of the words “young” and “lord.”
One definition of youngster is “a midshipman who has served less than four years.” In English, younker can also mean “a young man,” “youngster,” “child,” and, more precisely, “a junior seaman on board ship.”
The term “younger” was employed in the 19th century by authors including Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, and James Fenimore Cooper, but since 1900, its usage has drastically decreased.
Gremmie
The 1950s saw the rise in popularity of surfing, which gave rise to new terms like wipeout and hang five. Gremmie, a diminutive of Gremlin, was coined around 1960 to refer to a youthful or novice surfer. RAF pilots first used the term “gremlin” to refer to an inconsequential individual in the 1920s. Later, it was used to refer to the hypothetical source of mechanical issues (e.g., “a grease in the works”). For surfers, “gremmie” can also refer to a young surfer who disregards accepted water safety rules or a young individual who frequents the beach but does not surf.
Gremmie’s popularity peaked in the late 1960s, and since the 1980s, its usage in print has drastically decreased.
The bantling
The word “bantling,” which means “a very young child” or “infant,” has a distinguished literary history and was used by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron. The phrase may have originated from the German word bänkling, which means “bastard,” from Bank, which means “bench.” This would reflect the idea that a child of that kind would have been conceived on a bench rather than in the marriage bed. Additionally, it might have evolved from the word “band,” which means “swathe,” referring to a baby’s swaddling garments.
Ephebe
Ephebus, which means “a youth of ancient Greece,” or more precisely, “an Athenian 18 or 19 years old training for full citizenship,” is a variation of ephebe, which means “a young man.” The prefix epi-, which means “on” or “at,” and hēbē, which means “early manhood” or “youth,” are combined to form this term. Ephebe has been used to describe young men who are figuring out their careers as poets or painters, yet it is not unexpected that it is most frequently employed in reference to Ancient Greece.
The word “lass” is reminiscent of Scottish and Irish English dialects as well as northern English dialects. It has been a part of English since the 1300s and is still used today to denote “sweetheart” as well as “a young woman.” In the past, a less common usage in Scotland meant “maidservant.”
Although the word “lass” may have come from the Old Norse word for “unmarried,” it is more likely to have come from an Old Danish, Old Norwegian, or Old Swedish word that means “rag.”