age
Pluralages
Pluralages
- 1The amount of time someone has been alive or something has existed, measured from birth or origin up to the present or another reference point.
The form asks for your name, address, and age.
Scientists estimated the fossil's age at sixty million years.
UsageSay at the age of five or just at five. Give someone's age with be: I am twenty (not
incorrect: I have twenty years).Note
It applies as readily to fossils and the earth as to people.
- 2A particular period of history, marked by its events, people, or way of life, or the time when a certain person lived.
The printing press opened a new age of learning across Europe.
Knights and castles belong to an age long past.
UsageOften the age of + noun, or a capitalized name: the age of steam, the Bronze Age.
- 3To grow old or older, or to make a person or thing grow old or look older.
Stars age over billions of years as they burn through their fuel.
He had aged noticeably by the time the war ended.
UsageThe -ing form is aging or ageing, and the past is aged. People age well or age quickly.
Note
Plain growing older, with no object: people, child actors and arteries all age. The progressive is long established, as in Walter Savage Landor's 'I am ageing' in Imaginary Conversations.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The progressive construction has a historical example attributed to Landor in Imaginary Conversations. en.wiktionary.org
- Walter Savage Landor wrote Imaginary Conversations. en.wikipedia.org
- 4A particular stage of life, such as childhood or adulthood.
At his age, most boys care more about sports than school.
Many people reach middle age and start to rethink the careers they chose at twenty.
UsageCommon in at his age, at that age, middle age and old age.
- 5A long period of time.
The download took an age to finish.
I haven't seen my cousins in ages.
UsageThe singular takes an article, an age; the plural has none: for ages, in ages.
Similarages, eternity, forever, years, eon
Oppositemoment, instant, second
Note
Hyperbole packed into a single word. Nobody means a historical period when they say it has been an age since they last saw you.
- 6The condition of having grown old, or the closing years of a person's life.
Age had bent her back but not her spirit.
The manuscript's pages had grown brittle with age.
UsageOften with age: brittle with age, weak with age.
Similarsenility, elderliness, senescence, dotage
Oppositeyouth
- 7To give away a person's age, especially by showing that they have been around for a long time.
Admitting that I bought my first album on cassette certainly ages me.
I'll age myself by admitting that I remember when phones were attached to the wall.
UsageSaid lightly, mostly about yourself: that ages me, I'm aging myself.
Similardate
Note
The speaker has just shared a memory, such as Kennedy's assassination or watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report, that gives away how long they have been around.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- John F. Kennedy was assassinated, an event dating to 1963. archives.gov
- The Huntley-Brinkley Report was a television programme from decades ago, broadcast between 1956 and 1970. en.wikipedia.org
- 8The age at which a person is allowed to do something or gains full legal rights, as in 'voting age' or 'come of age'.
Most countries set the voting age at eighteen.
She enlisted the day she reached recruitment age.
UsageCommon compounds: voting age, drinking age, retirement age. You reach that age.
- 9To mature, or allow something such as wine, cheese or meat to mature, so that it gains flavor or quality over time.
The distillery ages its whiskey in oak barrels for at least twelve years.
Some steakhouses age their own beef in glass-fronted cabinets that diners can see from their tables.
UsageOften passive, with in or for: wine aged in oak for years.
Similarmature
Less common meanings
- 10The total time that a living thing is alive from birth to death, or the average span typical of its kind.
Note
Where the measured age counts up to now, this sense covers the whole span from birth to death. It is often applied to a kind rather than an individual, as in 'the age of man is three score years and ten'. Proverbial lines like that, and comparisons such as a dog's age set against a horse's, are where it mostly lives.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The quoted wording is attested as an example of age meaning a lifetime; no speaker or author is attributed. en.wiktionary.org
- 11A long period in the history of the Earth; in geology, the smallest formal unit of time, part of an epoch.
Reptiles gave way to mammals as one age of Earth's history ended and another began.
Trilobites flourished through an age that stretched across many millions of years.
Note
In popular use it covers the great stretches of the Earth's past, such as the Ice Age. Geologists also use it for a formal unit, a subdivision of an epoch. Outside geology, epoch and era can often stand in for it, but to a geologist the three are different ranks.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- The Ice Age is a popular name for a long interval in Earth's past. home.nps.gov
- An age is a formal geological time unit below an epoch. nacsn.americangeosciences.org
- Age, epoch and era are distinct geological ranks. nacsn.americangeosciences.org
- 12
- 13To turn out, with the passage of time, to be viewed or judged in a particular way.
The pundit's predictions about the housing market aged terribly.
Special effects from the nineties rarely age well on modern screens.
UsageOften used with well, badly, or poorly: hasn't aged well means something seems less good or suitable now.
- 14To determine how long something or someone has been alive or in existence.
Biologists age fish by examining growth rings in their scales.
Researchers aged the bones using radiocarbon dating.
Similardate
- 15A generation; the people born and living during the same period, considered as a group.
- 16One hundred years considered as a single period.
- 17One of twelve divisions of the astrological Great Year, each lasting roughly two thousand years and governed by a sign of the zodiac.
- 18To allow something, such as a debt, to continue existing by postponing the action that would end it.
- 19To categorize items, especially accounts or invoices, according to how old they are.
- 20In poker and similar games, the right of the player to the left of the dealer to pass on the first betting round and act last, or the player who holds that position.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
'Age' comes from Middle English age and Old French aage, from an assumed Vulgar Latin *aetāticum, based on Latin aetātem, itself from aevum ('lifetime'), and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyu- ('vital force'). The verb comes from the noun, and probably began as a participial adjective in -ed that was reanalyzed to form a verb.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The noun derives through Middle English and Old French from reconstructed Vulgar Latin *aetāticum, based on Latin aetātem, from aevum (‘lifetime’), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyu- (‘vital force’). en.wiktionary.org
- The verb derives from the noun, probably through an adjective in -ed subsequently reanalyzed as a verb. en.wiktionary.org