# age

Pronunciation: say "AYJ" /eɪd͡ʒ/

## Noun

1. The amount of time someone has been alive or something has existed, measured from birth or origin up to the present or another reference point.
   - Simple: How long a person, animal, or thing has lived or existed.
   - _The form asks for your name, address, and age._
   - _Scientists estimated the fossil's age at sixty million years._
2. A particular period of history, marked by its events, people, or way of life, or the time when a certain person lived.
   - Simple: A period in history known for certain events or people, as in 'the Stone Age' or 'in Shakespeare's age'.
   - _The printing press opened a new age of learning across Europe._
   - _Knights and castles belong to an age long past._
4. A particular stage of life, such as childhood or adulthood.
   - Simple: A stage of life, like being a child, a teenager, or an adult.
   - _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._
5. A long period of time.
   - Simple: A very long time.
   - _The download took an age to finish._
   - _I haven't seen my cousins in ages._
6. The condition of having grown old, or the closing years of a person's life.
   - Simple: Being old, or the time late in life.
   - _Age had bent her back but not her spirit._
   - _The manuscript's pages had grown brittle with age._
8. The age at which a person is allowed to do something or gains full legal rights, as in 'voting age' or 'come of age'.
   - Simple: The age when the law lets you do something, or when you are treated as a full adult.
   - _Most countries set the voting age at eighteen._
   - _She enlisted the day she reached recruitment age._
10. The total time that a living thing is alive from birth to death, or the average span typical of its kind.
   - Simple: The full time that a person, animal, or plant lives, from birth to death.
11. A long period in the history of the Earth; in geology, the smallest formal unit of time, part of an epoch.
   - Simple: A very long time in the Earth's past. In geology, a set part of a longer span of time called 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._

## Verb

3. To grow old or older, or to make a person or thing grow old or look older.
   - Simple: To get older, or to make someone or something get older 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._
7. To give away a person's age, especially by showing that they have been around for a long time.
   - Simple: To show or make clear that someone is old or has lived 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._
9. To mature, or allow something such as wine, cheese or meat to mature, so that it gains flavor or quality over time.
   - Simple: To get better with time, or let food or drink do this, like wine or cheese.
   - _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._
12. To treat or alter something so that it falsely appears older than it is.
   - Simple: To make something look older than it really is, often to trick people.
   - _The prop department aged the leather satchel so it would pass for a wartime relic._
   - _Dealers sometimes age reproduction furniture with chains and dyes to mimic antique wear._
13. To turn out, with the passage of time, to be viewed or judged in a particular way.
   - Simple: To come to seem good or bad as time passes.
   - _The pundit's predictions about the housing market aged terribly._
   - _Special effects from the nineties rarely age well on modern screens._
14. To determine how long something or someone has been alive or in existence.
   - Simple: To find out how old something or someone is.
   - _Biologists age fish by examining growth rings in their scales._
   - _Researchers aged the bones using radiocarbon dating._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A generation; the people born and living during the same period, considered as a group.
- (noun) One hundred years considered as a single period.
- (noun) One of twelve divisions of the astrological Great Year, each lasting roughly two thousand years and governed by a sign of the zodiac.
- (verb) To allow something, such as a debt, to continue existing by postponing the action that would end it.
- (verb) To categorize items, especially accounts or invoices, according to how old they are.
- (noun) In 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.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/age (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).