ageist, n. and a.
(ˈeɪdʒɪst)
Also agist.
[f. prec.: see -ist.]
A. n. One who advocates or practises ageism. B. adj. Pertaining to or characterized by ageism; discriminating on the grounds of age.
| 1970 Daily Tel. 2 June 12/4 The jack-booted agists of West Sussex must be stopped before they subject the elderly to the whole terror-apparatus of the Police State. 1974 Newsweek 6 May 24/3 She called him ‘a sexist, age-ist pig’. 1978 Lancet 19 Aug. 422/1 It is..extremely disheartening that you should be so ageist as to head the article ‘Care of the Elderly’. ‘The elderly’ is a figure of speech, metonymy, in which one attribute is used to describe the whole, just as in ‘the Irish’, ‘the blacks’,..and ‘the delinquents’. 1980 Maledicta III. 249 This was before the GAA (Gay Activists' Alliance—why not GAY? I suppose Gay American Youth would have been agist). 1983 S. Day-Lewis in Daily Tel. 21 Nov. 11/4 The proposer of the motor-cycle film said that the riders ranged from the middle-aged to the ‘fresh faced and pimply’ and quickly apologised in case he sounded ‘ageist’. |