Age

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /eɪd͡ʒ/

Definitions

1. The amount of time someone or something has existed since birth or creation ; a phase or period in the natural development of a person or object ; a distinct interval recognized by specific cultural, social, or technological characteristics
2. How long an organism or item has been alive or functional ; a particular point or stage in growth or maturity ; a designated epoch marked by notable events or trends
3. The total duration counted from a starting point to the present ; a defined segment in the cycle of life or progress ; a named span of time in history identified by unique features or changes

Etymology: The noun "age" arrived in English through Anglo-Norman and Old French, where "age" (French "âge") was itself a descendant of the Latin "aetas" and the related "aevum," meaning "lifetime" or "age of a person." English already had its own word for the concept, Old English "ieldu," which was eventually pushed aside by the French import. So the word that now means a person's years was, for centuries, the newcomer. The verb has a more tangled history. It developed from the noun, but it did not begin as a straightforward verb. Its earliest uses were mostly as a participial adjective, the kind of formation that lets a word describe a state rather than an action, and English speakers then reanalysed that adjective as a verb. The shift is a reminder that grammatical categories were not always fixed, and that a verb can grow out of an adjective that grew out of a noun.

Synonyms: era, period, epoch, generation, lifetime

Antonyms: youth, immaturity, inexperience, novelty, freshness