SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE TENDERONI'S OUT THERE...PAST AND PRESENT.....

Tenderoni is a slang terminology used to describe one's younger male or female love interest or someone too young to talk to or become involved with. It is composed of "tender", which is a synonym for young and "roni" which usually serves as an affectionate diminutive towards a male or female. It denotes your younger sweetheart, your younger better half, your younger boyfriend/girlfriend, and more recently used as an alternate word for jailbait.

The word is also commonly used to simply describe young women, without the connotation of them being too young. This definition of the word is common in popular music. In the 1970s the word tenderoni was commonly used to identify a younger male or female that an older individual was interested in talking to or dating. Or a younger person one needed to stay away from because of their age. It was not uncommon to hear someone say, "I have a tenderoni in my life", "that's my tenderoni" or "Don't talk to him/her because he/she is a tenderoni."

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, which defines tenderoni as "a sweet young girl", dates the word to the 1980s, attributing it to black teenagers in the United States. The word gained renewed attention when Bobby Brown used it in his successful 1988 hit "Roni" to describe a young beautiful girl. The term has surfaced in other pieces of music as well.