Weird historical linguistical thought

[xiphias]

I've read in a bunch of works on the history of childhood that the concept of "teenagerhood" as a separate period of life is a twentieth-century concept (Depression era, specifically: post WWI.)

Something just hit me out of the blue about a minute and a half ago: if that is true, why do both Biblical Hebrew and Classical Latin have words for "teenager"? (na'ar/na'arah for Hebrew, iuvenis for Latin)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

iuvenis, IIRC, technically just means a young man who's more than about 15 - & therefore too old to be called a boy - but isn't married yet. Although if he gets out of his twenties without marrying you usually switched to "vir" out of respect. But I think the 'official' meaning was "unmarried young man," not "teenager." Wouldn't know about the Hebrew.