Also 4–6 strepe-, stryplynge, 5–6 striplyng, 6 stripelyng, strypplyng(e, 6–7 strippling (6 -yng), 7, 9 striplin. [Prob. f. STRIP sb.1, though that word is not recorded before the 15th c.) + -LING1.
The etymological notion seems to be ‘one who is slender as a strip, one whose figure is not yet filled out.]
1. A youth, one just passing from boyhood to manhood.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., VI. i. (1495), 186. Adolescencia the aege of a yonge stryplynge duryth the thyrd vii yere.
c. 1400. Maundev. (1839), xxvii. 278. The faireste ȝonge striplynges.
a. 1513. Fabyan, Chron., V. civ. (1811), 79. Arthurus, the sone of Vter Pendragon, a strepelynge of .xv. yeres of Age.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 139. Euery stripplyng of the age of .xii yeres and aboue, before his Alderman in his warde was newly charged with the same othe.
1611. Bible, 1 Sam. xvii. 56. And the king said, Enquire thou whose sonne the stripling is.
1650. Fuller, Pisgah, IV. vi. 103. From a child he starts up a youth, and becomes a stripling.
1745. in 10th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. I. 128. The only son I have left me, being but a stripling of fourtein years age.
1839. Thirlwall, Greece, lii. VI. 262. He affected to speak slightingly of Alexander, as a stripling.
1878. Browning, Poets Croisic, ix. This proves mere Stripling’s amusement.
transf. and fig. 1683. Dryden, Dk. Guise, II. ii. I’m but a Stripling in the Trade of War.
1693. Humours Town, 32. A conceited School-master is but a stripling in Pedantry to him.
1879. Stevenson, Trav. Cevennes (1886), 19. An amiable stripling of a river.
1887. Moloney, Forestry W. Afr., 230. My trees ran up so rapidly and such striplings that tornadoes blew down two or three.
2. attrib. (chiefly appositive) passing into adj.
1553. T. Wilson, Rhet., 7. The stripelyng age, or spryng tide.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. ii. II. Babylon, 51. He tyranniz’d among his strippling-peers.
1645. Milton, Colast., 4. Having convers’d much with a stripling Divine or two of those newly fledge Probationers, that usually come scouting from the University. Ibid. (1667), P. L., III. 636. A stripling Cherube.
1725. Pope, Odyss., I. 194. Gay, stripling youths.
1795. Southey, Joan of Arc, VII. 107. Before his stripling arm Fled Warwick.
1853. M. Arnold, Scholar Gypsy, viii. Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe.
