middle-aged

comparative more middle-aged · superlative most middle-aged · alternative middleaged · alternative obsolete middle aged · alternative obsolete middle-ag’d

1. not comparableOf or relating to middle age or a middle-ager; neither old nor young.

   The person of interest is a middle-aged man seen acting strangely in the security camera's video.

   4 more examples

   The admirable M. Leibnitz, a German, but a member of the Royal Society, scarce yet middle aged.

   1676, Rigaud, quoting Collins, Corr. Sci. Men, volume II, published 1841, page 453

   When I was a middle-aged Man.

   1709, Steele, Tatler, № 77, ¶ 2

   If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot — say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance — literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

   1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

   A middle-aged, grave and honourable man.

   1880, G. Meredith, Tragic Com., published 1881, page 81

2. comparableCharacteristic of middle-aged people.

   Well, perhaps that beige-on-beige color scheme may be a little middle-aged for a young artist's apartment; a little repainting won't hurt anything.

   2 more examples

   Cowper was really mad at intervals, but his poetry, admirable as it is in its own middle-aged way, is in need of anything rather than a strait-waistcoat.

   1886, Lowell, Gray, in Latest Lit. Ess., published 1891, page 2

   His already almost middle-aged aspect of serene sagacity.

   1887, Ruskin, Præterita, volume II, page 269

3. not comparableobsoleteBelonging to the Middle Ages; medieval.

   Of the modern and middle-aged Greek.

   1804, Mitford, Inquiry, page 318

   2 more examples

   The reading and perusing of middle-ag’d Antiquities.

   1710, Hearne, Collect. (O.H.S.), volume III, page 49

   The English hunger bears a strong resemblance to the Spanish hambre, formed from the middle-aged Latin famina.

   1845, Proc. Philol. Soc., volume II, page 145