young

Young is part of a widespread family of words that go back to Indo-European *juwngkós ‘young’ (others include Welsh ieuanc, Irish ōg, and Sanskrit juvaçás). And this in turn was derived from *juwen-, which produced Latin juvenis (source of English junior, juvenile, etc), Lithuanian jaunas, Russian junyj, Bulgarian jun, etc. The Indo-European adjective passed into prehistoric Germanic as *juwunggaz. This was later contracted to *junggaz, which evolved into German jung, Dutch jong, Swedish and Danish ung, and English young. Youth (OE), and its relatives German Jugend and Dutch jeugd, go back to prehistoric west Germanic *jugunth-, an alteration of *juwunth-, which was derived from *juwunggaz ‘young’.