ripe

(rīp)

adj. rip·er, rip·est

1. Fully developed; mature: ripe peaches.

2. Sufficiently advanced in preparation or aging to be used or eaten: ripe cheese.

3. Thoroughly matured, as by study or experience; seasoned: ripe judgment.

4. Advanced in years: the ripe age of 90.

5. Fully prepared to do or undergo something; ready: "By 1965 the republic was ripe for a coup" (Alex Shoumatoff).

6. Sufficiently advanced; opportune: The time is ripe for great societal changes.

7. Sensuous and full: ripe lips.

8. Coarse or indecent; vulgar: the comic's ripe language.

9. Emitting a foul odor: "the dirt and stench ... the mountains of ripe bushmeat in every camp" (Bryan Mealer).

[Middle English, from Old English rīpe.]

ripe′ly adv.

ripe′ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

ripeness - the state of being ripe

matureness, maturity - state of being mature; full development

greenness - the state of not being ripe

Translations

نُضوج

zralost

modenhed

òroski

ripeness

[ˈraɪpnɪs] N → madurez f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

ripeness

[ˈraɪpnɪs] n → maturité frip-off [ˈrɪpɒf] n

(= swindle) → arnaque f
it's a rip-off! → c'est de l'arnaque!

(= copy) → copie f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

ripeness

n → Reife f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

ripeness

[ˈraɪpnɪs] n → maturazione f

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

ripe

(raip) adjective

(negative unripe) (of fruit, grain etc) ready to be gathered in or eaten. ripe apples/corn.

ˈripeness noun

ˈripen verb

to make or become ripe or riper. The sun ripened the corn; The corn ripened in the sun.

ripe (old) age

a very old age. He lived to the ripe (old) age of ninety-five.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"There is no occasion to move yet, my son," she replied; "the man who only sends to his friends to help him with his harvest is not really in earnest." The owner of the field came again a few days later and saw the wheat shedding the grain from excess of ripeness. He said, "I will come myself tomorrow with my laborers, and with as many reapers as I can hire, and will get in the harvest." The Lark on hearing these words said to her brood, "It is time now to be off, my little ones, for the man is in earnest this time; he no longer trusts his friends, but will reap the field himself."

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Before the blade got fairly into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound.

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The girlhood of which she had been cheated seemed to come back to her with the ripeness of womanhood; she expanded like a flower of flame and perfume; no laugh was readier than hers, no wit quicker, in the twilight circles of that enchanted summer.

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What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge--and you know what my knowledge is--unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is one and which is the other; they are inextricably mingled.

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Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes.

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He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal development of her bosom.

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He would enter the ring in his full ripeness of strength.

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But even if they are filled with toss silk, I can tell you, senor, I am not going to fight; let our masters fight, that's their lookout, and let us drink and live; for time will take care to ease us of our lives, without our going to look for fillips so that they may be finished off before their proper time comes and they drop from ripeness."

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Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows.

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This went on for three days, and then she settled down to write the result with the Man of Wrath's typewriter, borrowed whenever her notes for any chapter have reached the state of ripeness necessary for the process she describes as "throwing into form." She writes everything with a typewriter, even her private letters.

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At the ranch house the morning air was crisp and brittle, yet midday made the shade welcome, and in the open, under the winter sun, roses bloomed and oranges, grape-fruit, and lemons turned to golden yellow ripeness. Yet, a thousand feet beneath, on the floor of the valley, the mornings were white with frost.

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I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

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