middle age

Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Related to middle age: midlife crisis

middle age

The time of human life between youth and old age, usually reckoned as the years between 40 and 60. Also called midlife.

middle age

the period of life between youth and old age, usually (in man) considered to occur approximately between the ages of 40 and 60

mid′dle age′

the period of human life between youth and old age, usu. considered as the years between 45 and 65.

[1350–1400]

mid′dle-aged′ (eɪgd) adj.

Middle Ages

– middle age

1. 'Middle Ages'

In European history, the Middle Ages were the period between approximately 1000 AD and 1400 AD.

This practice was common throughout the Middle Ages.

2. 'middle age'

Middle age is the period in a person's life when they are no longer young but are not yet old.

...the onset of middle age.

Men tend to put on weight in middle age.

3. 'middle-aged'

When someone has reached this period of their life, you can say that they are middle-aged.

The boss was a middle-aged woman.

...middle-aged married businessmen.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Switch to new thesaurus

Noun

middle age - the time of life between youth and old age (e.g., between 40 and 60 years of age)

time of life - a period of time during which a person is normally in a particular life state

adulthood, maturity - the period of time in your life after your physical growth has stopped and you are fully developed

change of life, menopause, climacteric - the time in a woman's life in which the menstrual cycle ends

climacteric - a period in a man's life corresponding to menopause

Translations

مُتَوَسِّط العُمْر، كُهولَه

střední věk

midalder

âge mûr

miîur aldur

midt i livet

stredný vek

orta yaş

中年

middle age

n → mezza età f inv

middle

(ˈmidl) noun

1. the central point or part. the middle of a circle.

2. the central area of the body; the waist. You're getting rather fat round your middle.

adjective

equally distant from both ends. the middle seat in a row.

ˈmiddling adjective

average. He's neither tall nor short, but of middling height.

middle age

the years between youth and old age. She is well into middle age.

ˌmiddle-ˈaged adjective

Middle Ages (with the)

the time between the end of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.

Middle East (with the)

Egypt and the countries of Asia west of Pakistan.

ˈmiddleman (-mӕn) noun

a dealer who buys goods from the person who makes or grows them, and sells them to shopkeepers or to the public; a wholesaler. You can save money by buying direct from the factory and cutting out the middleman.

be in the middle of (doing) something

to be busily occupied doing something. Please excuse my appearance. I was in the middle of washing my hair.

middle age

n. mediana edad, madurez.

References in classic literature ?

Muzzle retired; and a pale, sharp-nosed, half-fed, shabbily- clad clerk, of middle age, entered the room.

View in context

And how inexpressibly sad it was to hear him prattling on of the ideal life, of socialism, of Walt Whitman and what not,--all the dear old quackeries,--while I was already settling down comfortably to a conservative middle age.

Wine is the only youth granted to middle age," I continued,--"in vino juventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remain so proudly independent of that great Elixir--though I confess that I have met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent critics of the wine-list.

View in context

The dashing young frigate captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of enterprise and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet, the good and trusted servant of his country under two kings and a queen, had felt correctly Nelson's influence, and expressed himself with precision out of the fulness of his seaman's heart.

View in context

I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English.

The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature.

View in context

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years.

View in context

In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the Emperor, the other against him.

View in context

In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns.

View in context

One of the most striking general facts in the later Middle Ages is the uniformity of life in many of its aspects throughout all Western Europe.