bairnhood means the quality, condition, or state of a bairn (child); childhood. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “bairnhood” is a great word
BAIRNHOOD — [Noun] The state or period of being a bairn; childhood. Borrowed from Scots bairnheid, equivalent to bairn ("child") + the suffix -hood (denoting a state or condition). Unlike "childhood," the standard, culturally neutral term, or "infancy," which confines itself to the earliest, pre-verbal stage, bairnhood is a word freighted with locality, evoking a specific cultural and climatic experience. It is the chill of a granite step through woolen stockings, the taste of gritty tablet sweet pulled from a pocket, and the grey light of a long, low summer evening on a northern shore—a childhood remembered not as a universal concept, but as a lost geography of the self.
noun
- The quality, condition, or state of a bairn (child); childhood“In my bairnhood I would often linger in the glens where they dwelt, to jeer at them.” “Truly, yours was a wild boyhood, Olvir. You have yet told me little of it.” “A merry bairnhood, though Otkar's was a heavy hand.””