young

   By no means as frequently used a vocative element as ‘old’, and normally applied to hearers who really are young, whereas ‘old’ can be used to hearers of any age.

   The speaker is usually noticeably older than the person addressed, unless the former is deliberately flattering the hearer. That is the case in The Stone Angel, by Margaret Laurence, where a doctor addresses a very old lady as ‘young lady’.

   The same term can sound quite different when used to a girl, as in Edna Ferber’s Showboat: ‘Now then, young lady, want it or not, you’ll eat some of this broth.’

   ‘Young man’ and ‘young woman’ are similar expressions that can be either friendly or unfriendly according to the tone in which they are uttered. When Dr Primrose calls his daughter ‘young woman’ in The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith, she is most upset. ‘Why so cold a name, papa?’ she asks him. ‘This is the first time you have called me by so cold a name.’ The good doctor immediately says: ‘I ask pardon, my darling.’

   ‘Young’, significantly, is often included as an element in an insulting vocative expression. ‘You young hound’ occurs in Doctor at Sea, by Richard Gordon; ‘you cheeky young bleeder’ is in A Kind of Loving, by Stan Barstow, along with ‘you young sod’; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, by Alan Sillitoe, has ‘you bloody young fools’; Stop at Nothing, by John Welcome has ‘you young pup’.

   ‘You young clip’ is decidedly unfriendly in The Taste of Too Much, by Clifford Hanley. However, apparent insults which include ‘young’, when addressed to young boys or girls, are often covert endearments or are actually friendly. Such is the case with ‘you young blackguard’ in Len Deighton’s Funeral in Berlin, ‘you young rogue’ in The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene, ‘you long-legged young bugger’ in The Hiding Place, by Robert Shaw, and so on.

   Even when ‘young’ is part of a friendly expression, it is tinged with condescension on the part of the speaker; used in an insulting way it is meant to remind the hearer that his or her age entitles the older person who is speaking to some respect.