age
age (āj)
noun
- the time that a person or a thing has existed since birth or beginning
- usual or expected life span the age of a medieval peasant was quite short
- a stage of life she is at the awkward age
- the condition of being old; old age wearied with age
- a generation
- any interval of geologic time; specif., a subdivision of an epoch corresponding to the rock strata of a stage ()
- any prehistoric cultural period in human development the Stone Age
- a period characterized by some person or by some outstanding feature or influence the Elizabethan Age, the Space Age
- Informal a long time
Etymology: ME < OFr aage < ML *aetaticum < L aetas, contr. < aevitas, akin to aevum, age, eternity < IE base *aiw- > aye
intransitive verb aged, ag′·ing or age′·ing
- to grow old or show signs of growing old
- to ripen or become mature
transitive verb
- to make, or make seem, old or mature
- to cause to ripen or become mature over a period of time under fixed conditions to age cheese
of age
having reached the age when one has full legal rights
age
n.
The period of one's existence
span, lifetime, duration, time of life; see life 4.Particular stages of life include: infancy, childhood, girlhood, boyhood, adolescence, teens, youth, adulthood, middle age, old age, dotage, sweet sixteen*, flaming youth*, anecdotage*.
Old age
old age, advanced years, elderliness, senescence, antiquity, oldness, ancientness, decrepitude, superannuation, seniority, maturity, golden years, declining years, sunset years, winter of life, senectitude; see also sense 1.A period of time
epoch, era, period, time, century, decade, eon, generation, interval, interim, term, days (of someone or something); see also life 4, period 1.*A long time; often plural
eon, eternity, years, dog's age*, coon's age*, donkey's years*, month of Sundays*. See syn. study at period.
of age
age
v.
n
age of capacity
age of consent
- The age, usually determined by statute, below which a person may not marry without parental consent. See also consent.
- The age, usually determined by statute, below which a person is legally incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse. See consent and rape.
age of majority
age of reason
- The age, usually determined by statute, below which a child cannot be legally capable of committing a crime.
- The age, usually determined by statute or case law, below which a child cannot be legally capable of committing a tort.
legal age
Object
- child: The University also has a nursery facility for children aged six months to five years.
Converse of object
- reach: Lindsey was just reaching the age where she could be trusted in the house on her own.
Adjective modifier
- golden: There never was a golden age of public housing.
- middle: The origins of the town date back to the middle ages.
- average: Given that 50.7 is the average age of the menopause this is the most relevant age to target with limited resources.
- minimum: The minimum age of recruitment to the Armed Forces will be 18 or older.
- early: Most children learn the Green Cross Code at an early age, they just forget to apply it.
- old: Through no fault of mine I am now looking for my 3rd home at the ripe old age of 9 months.
Modifies a noun
- discrimination: Only then can there be quick and fair remedies for victims of age discrimination in health care.
- group: Next year, 16 qualifiers from each age group will be invited to take part in the final.
- limit: Upper age limit - 24 years old on the 31st August.
Noun used with modifier
- retirement: We will all face a hike in the retirement age.
- tender: Even fewer can claim their first screen kiss to have been at the tender age of 11.
- ice: Tuesday 18th October 2005 " The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in.
- childbearing: If risks are identified by the assessment, information about them should be given to all women of childbearing age in the workplace.
- pension: Soon some east European country will set the pension age at 70 to try to compete with its more powerful neighbors.
- voting: Mon 6th Sep 2004: Voting age on the agenda for Labor.
Preposition: of
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child isgrown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.
My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow, An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast: But thirty thousand to the rest. An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For Lady you deserve this state; Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.
Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.
An age in her embraces passed, Would seem a winter's day; Where life and light, with envious haste, Are torn and snatched away. But, oh how slowly minutes roll, When absent from her eyes That feed my love, which is my soul, It languishes and dies.
Age is deformed, youth unkind, We scorn their bodies, they our mind.
The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, whichforgivesitselfeverything, isforgiven nothing.
Age is our reconciliation with dullness.
'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!'said Mr Gradgrind 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!' 'Bitzer'said Thomas Gradgrind.'Your definition of a horse.' 'Quadruped.Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer. 'Now girl number twenty,'said Mr Gradgrind.'You know what a horse is.'
'The age of chivalry is past,'said May Dacre.'Bores have succeeded to dragons.'
The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract. 306
The feelings withwhichwe facethisnewage of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercyare reconciled, and the judge and the brother are one.
The city is old, out of step with the century, but age only seems to have quickened its elements Relics from the past continually pierce the present. Some dream of love survives the sandstone apartment houses.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
I have now reached the point where I can look over the great art of antiquityand its Renaissance.But, for myself, I cannot find anyartistic connection with ourown times. And to want to create something outside of one's own age strikes me as suspect.
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When strait a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.
Only when onehas lost all curiosity has onereached the age to write an autobiography.
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there anotherTroy for her to burn?
Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.
Of all the great Victorian writers, he was probably the most antagonistic to theVictorian age itself.
Anyone happy in this age and place Is daft or corrupt. Better to abdicate From a material and spiritual terrain Fit only for barbarians.
We are essentially fragile.We don't have to wait for the sword or some other equally sensational weapon to strike us down There are so many ways of us dying it's astonishing any of us choose old age.
At the age of14 I discovered writing as an escape frombeing called a sissy by the neighborhood kids, and Miss Nancy by my father.
'You are old, Father William,'the young man said, 'And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your headö Do you think, at your age, it is right?' 'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, 'I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again.' See Southey 805:96.
La cruaute¤ , bien loin d'e" tre un vice, est le premier sentiment qu'imprime en nous la nature; l'enfant brise son hochet, mord le te¤ ton de sa nourrice, e¤ trangle son oiseau, bien avant que d'avoir l'a" ge de raison. Far from being a vice, cruelty is the primary feeling that nature imprints in us. The infant breaks its rattle, bites its nurse's nipple, and strangles a bird, well before reaching the age of reason.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies,O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! Light the prime work of God to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, 586 Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
Brought up inanage when ladies apparently rolledalong on wheels, Mr Quarles was peculiarly susceptible to calves.
Thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
Envyand wrathshortenthelife, and carefulnessbringeth age before the time.
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
Were we required to characterise this age of ours byany single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical,Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of the word.
I hold that the characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.
A manner rude and wild Is common at your age.
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
If I can rejoice for a moment, Death at an early age would still be a long life.
Youmust dressaccording toyourage, yourpursuits, your object in life.
All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Ours is essentiallya tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
Every city has a sex and age which have nothing to do with demography.
For every philosopher, in every age, the first question must be:Just what is philosophy?
Fashion is the image of an age and can tells its story better than a speech.
For if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And speckled vanity Will sicken soon and die.
Self-parody is the first portent of age.
Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.
The atrocious crime of being a young man, which [Walpole] has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth, and not of those who continue ignorant in spite of their age and experience.
Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.
In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
We live in the age of mass loquacity.We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the c.v., the cri de coeur.
I am becoming like the Irish Census, broken down by Age, Sex, and Religion.
The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.
And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience to attain To something like prophetic strain.
I bequeath my soul to God For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.
My times be inThy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and Death complete the same!
Whatever our forefathers were, or whatever they did or suffered, or were enforced to yield unto, we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitancies, molestations, or arbitrary power.
I readilyadmit that I am often more serious than I should be at my age or in my present circumstances, yet I know from experiencethat Iamnever lessgiventomelancholy thanwhen I am keenlyapplying the feeble powers of my fallen to be the laughing stock of children.
Not bad. Most people myage are dead.You could look it up.
Stalinthat great lover of peace, a man of giant stature who moulded, as few other men have done, the destinies of his age The occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but perhaps the ending of an historic era.
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
A new glass age has begun, which is equal in beauty to the old one of Gothic windows.
If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist's couch.
There is no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it'stheway people look and laugh, and runup the steps of omnibuses.
In the days of my youth I remembered my God! And He hath not forgotten myage.
There is nothing in Socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
But now that age comes A moment of joy is harder and harder to get.
Of no ageönor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Youth, large, lusty, lovingöyouth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played, but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.
Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age.
In order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizationsand influencethemfromwithin. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capableand skilled in the practice of his own profession.
Perfections of means and confusion of goals seemöin my opinionöto characterize our age.
Must then a Christ perish in torment in everyage to save those that have no imagination?
Say, Britain, could you ever boast,ö Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.
Whenever possible print a woman's age.
She had reached an age where she thought she could not stand to knowany moreshe pushed any discovery aside with embarassment.
Thus our twin souls in one shall grow, And teach the world new love, Redeem the age and sex, and show A flame fate dares not move: And courting death to be our friend, Our lives, together too, shall end.
Why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.
Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.
So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, No more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower, Of manya lady, and many a paramour: Gather therefore the rose, whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower: Gather the rose of love, whilst yet is time, Whilst loving thou mayst love' d be with equal crime.
Soul of the Age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
Mr Wordsworth'sgeniusisa pure emanationofthe Spirit ofthe Age.Had helived inanyother period of the world, he would never have been heard of.
I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer. To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minuteöand I do. But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
For to be yong I wald not, for my wis, Off all this warld to mak me lord and king: The more of age, the nerar hevynnis blis.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
We were now actually in the inner sanctuary of the Nanda Devi Basin, and at each step I experienced that subtlethrill which anyone of imagination must feel when treading hitherto unexplored country My most blissful dream as a child was to be in some such valley, free to wander where I liked, and discover for myself some hitherto unrevealed glory of Nature. Now the reality was no less wonderful than that half-forgotten dream; and of how many childish fancies can that be said, in this age of disillusionment ?
Why didn't Eternity have this deformed age aborted ? Its birthmark is the stamp of a newspaper, its medium is printer's ink, and in its veins flows ink.
So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change To withered weak and grey.
This is the editorial age, and the most intellectual of all ages.
Even such isTime, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust, Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new.
Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poornot that men are wickedbut that men know so little of men.
My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
Body-line was not an incident, it was not an accident, it was not a temporary aberration. It was the violence and ferocity of our age expressing itself in cricket.
Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show; We may our ends by our beginnings know.
And almost every one when age, Disease, or sorrow strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like him.
When you're my age, you just never risk being illö because then everyone says: Oh, he's done for.
When you've reached myage, and your friends are beginning to worry about you, blind dates are a way of life.
What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.
The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
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