middle age

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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.

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.

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

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

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.

Collins COBUILD English Usage © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 2004, 2011, 2012

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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

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

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.

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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. He had no hope that had not long been my despair, no aversion that I had not accepted among the more or less comfortable conditions of the universe.

"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."

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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.

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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.

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Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses.

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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.

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It was a feudal castle of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we found it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high.

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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.

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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.

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Amongst other things they spoke of the middle ages: some praised that period as far more interesting, far more poetical than our own too sober present; indeed Councillor Knap defended this opinion so warmly, that the hostess declared immediately on his side, and both exerted themselves with unwearied eloquence.