quincentenarian

plural quincentenarians

1. One who or that which is between 500 and 599 years old.

   Upon waking, Ornaith’s thoughts went to this year’s celebrated quincentenarian, Christopher Columbus.

   1992 February, “Ornaith Murphy — The Road Less Traveled”, in Latitude 38, volume 176, page 101

   5 more examples

   As the Impératrice stopped two or three days in the magnificent harbor of Smyrna I had good opportunity to land and make my way to the scene of Polycarp’s Martyrdom amid the colossal cypresses which outdo all those of Italy, except the quincentenarians in the Giusti garden in Verona.

   1894, Frances Power Cobbe, Life of Frances Power Cobbe, volume I, Boston, Mass; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, page 231

   Judge Sullivan’s idea that men will sometime live to be 500 years old may prove true, but there is nothing enticing about the prospect. Unless the vigor of youth can accompany old age, the quincentenarian would be a Struldbrug or a Tithonus, a monster of senile hideousness or a being withered away to a whisper.

   1910 August 9, “Will Men Sometime Live to Be 500 Years Old?”, in The Spokesman-Review, volume XXX, number 27, Spokane, Wash., page 4

   Dr. John J. McKetta’s most startling prediction—though he doesn’t say when it’s going to happen—is that the human life span will be increased to 500 years.[…]But, playing along with this game, many of us must wonder how one of these future quincentenarians is going to manage to live so long in such a world — especially if he tries to cross a road where the self-propelled, electric-eye-driven automobiles are whizzing by.

   1964 June 30, “Added Senses”, in The Corpus Christi Times, volume 54, number 311, Corpus Christi, Tex., page 2-B

   “The Guardians,” said Draeg, “are all quincentenarians at least. For them, we’re the Longevity Project.”[…]Her train extended back a good five meters, with two pairs of trainsweeps; a quincentenarian, at least.

   1993, Joan Slonczewski, Daughter of Elysium, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, Inc., →ISBN, pages 38 and 49

   In some references, he is said to have lived to be 500 years old, which may have given rise to the brief mention of a 500-year-old man here (I have found no other quincentenarians among Bacon’s or the De retardatione’s various examples of long life).

   2006, Mary Teresa Tavormina, Sex, Aging, & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, →ISBN, page 365