children

English

Children.

From Middle English children, alteration of earlier childre ("children"; > English dialectal childer), from Old English ċildru, ċildra (“children”), nominative and accusative plural of ċild (“child”), equivalent to child +‎ -ren.

(UK, US, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/
- (Southern US, African-American Vernacular) IPA^(key): [tʃɪl.ɹən]
- (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃɪl.d̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]
- Audio (US): (file)
(UK dialectal, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃʊldɹən/
- (General Australian) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃʊld̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷən]
(Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪldɹən/, (proscribed) /ˈt͡ʃɪl.dən/
Rhymes: -ɪldɹən, -ʊldɹən
Hyphenation: chil‧dren

children

plural of child.
- 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
  Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

From childre (“children”) with a pleonastic addition of the plural suffix -en; compare calveren, eyren, lambren.

children