eleventeen years old
- adjective
- Informal
:
once años
- He joked about being eleventeen years old to get away with staying up late.
Examples
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When asked his age, he grinned and said he was eleventeen years old.
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She insists she's eleventeen years old whenever she wants to act older than eleven.
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Wow, I'm eleventeen years old!
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I feel eleventeen years old today!
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When his mom asked how old he was, he playfully replied, "I'm eleventeen years old!"
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She told her friends she was eleventeen years old just to sound cool and older.
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At the birthday party, he proudly declared, "I'm eleventeen years old this year!"
Synonyms
12
2.9
A child between childhood and the teenage years, usually aged 9 to 12
7
3.1
Made for children aged nine to twelve
A child younger than thirteen who is about to become a teenager
Surface Forms
Morphology
The syntactic frame 'X years old' is fully compositional so a learner who knows 'years' and 'old' will understand this marks an age; the nonce 'eleventeen' transparently evokes the numeral pattern (eleven/‑teen) so learners can infer a joking, approximate age. However, because 'eleventeen' is an invented, humorous coinage and its exact numeric interpretation and pragmatic playfulness rely on cultural/word‑formation awareness, the meaning is not completely predictable.
Etymology
Eleventeen years old comes from blending eleven and seventeen into a silly number. Kids say it to sound a little older than eleven without being serious. That's why it means a playful, 'made-up' age between eleven and twelve.