tween-agen.adj.
/ˈtwiːneɪdʒ/, U.S. /ˈtwiˌneɪdʒ/ colloquial (chiefly North American).
A. n.
A person who is nearly, or has only just become, a teenager. Also (with the): such people as a class. Cf. tween n.2 Now rare.
ΚΠ
1938 Sun (Baltimore) 31 Aug. 9 (advt.) Tongues [i.e., on shoes] are the talk of the ‘tween-age’.
1945 N.Y. Times 6 Mar. 19/3 Looking at the future in terms of two decades, a youth is more important than the veteran; but now he is a ‘tween age’, too old to cry, too young to fight.
1970 F. T. Carter 'Tween-age Ambassadors v. 87 ‘What's a 'tween-age?’.. ‘That's a person about..eleven or twelve years old. Somebody who is not a teenager yet, but a little old to be a child.’
B. adj.
Of, relating to, or intended for tweenagers.
ΚΠ
1951 N.Y. Times 9 Sept. 88 (advt.) Tween Age shoes.
1956 Amer. Jrnl. Psychiatry 112 751/1 What percentage of the tween-age group is involved?
1970 F. T. Carter 'Tween-age Ambassadors v. 87 I'd say you were a very good ambassador, Earl... A tween-age ambassador!
1989 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch (Nexis) 11 Jan. (You Mag.) 5 Pre-adolescence, or the tween-age years, as I call them, begins around age 11 and lasts through age 13.
1999 Maclean's (Electronic ed.) 22 Mar. The mop-topped Carter played Toronto in February, drawing a seething mass of tweenage music lovers laden with cash.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, December 2008; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1938