Precocious

//pɹəˈkəʊʃəs// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Characterized by exceptionally early development or maturity.

    "The precocious plant was already blooming flowers by day 4."

  2. 2
    Exhibiting advanced skills and aptitudes at an abnormally early age.

    "The precocious child began reading the newspaper at age four."

Adjective
  1. 1
    appearing or developing early wordnet
  2. 2
    characterized by or characteristic of exceptionally early development or maturity (especially in mental aptitude) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
advancedearlya bit previousaheadbrightdeveloped

Example

More examples

"You are being rather precocious."

Etymology

From Latin praecox (“premature, precocious, ripe before time, early ripe”), from praecoquō (“to ripen beforehand, ripen fully, also boil beforehand”), from prae (“before”) + coquō (“to cook, boil, ripen”). Doublet of apricot.

Related phrases

precocious pseudopubertyprecocious puberty

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.