Wunderkindn.

1891 G. B. Shaw in World 23 Dec. 15/2 Every generation produces its infant Raphaels and infant Rosciuses, and Wunderkinder who can perform all the childish feats of Mozart.

1913 W. J. Locke Stella Maris iii. 28 You call her Ariel, or Syrinx, or a Sprite of the Sea, or a Wunder~kind whose original trail of glory-cloud has not faded into the light of common day.

1923 D. H. Lawrence Stud. Classic Amer. Lit. (1924) 102 The absolute duplicity of that blue-eyed Wunderkind of a Nathaniel.

1931 Notes & Queries 3 Jan. 16/1 A great many instances of Wunderkinder were brought together by the late Dr. Leonard George Guthrie, in his Fitzpatrick Lectures to the Royal College of Physicians (1907), entitled ‘Contributions to the study of Precocity in Children’, privately printed, 1921.

1947 A. Einstein Music Romantic Era xv. 213 Chopin was a wunderkind, both as virtuoso and composer.

1973 L. Heren Growing up Poor in London iii. 65 Again I suppose that the [school] orchestra was better than most of its kind because of the Jews. Some took private lessons, and were regarded as Wunderkinder by their parents.

1984 P. Rose Parallel Lives (1985) 81 His career at the Royal Academy school was impressive; indeed he was something of a wunderkind in the art world.

1930 E. Culbertson Contract Bridge Blue Bk. xvii. 227 He [sc. a bridge player] may belong to a proud class of wunderkinder who ‘never need a book’ or who ‘have no system’.

1940 H. G. Wells Babes in Darkling Wood i. i. 31 He was in the habit of calling his host and hostess ‘The ultimate generation, the last and so far the best’. They were, he said, his ‘Wunderkinds’.

1972 New Yorker 9 Sept. 30 It's a real American tragedy—Wunderkind at twenty, Übermensch at thirty, kaputt at forty.

1975 New Yorker 25 Aug. 50/3 Zen, the colt by Damacus that horsemen say will be the Wunderkind of the season, ran a temperature before the Sanford Stakes and was scratched.

1982 R. Ludlum Parsifal Mosaic xx. 320 He's received a fair amount of media exposure—the thirty-year old wunderkind.