middle-aged, a.
(stress variable)
[f. middle a. + age n. + -ed2.]
1. a. Of middle-age, neither young nor old. Also transf. and fig.
| 1608 Topsell Serpents 73 The elder looke to the family, placing in due order that hony which is gathered and wrought by the middle-aged Bees. 1611 Coryat Crudities 252 He was a middle-aged man, as about forty yeares old. 1676 Collins in Rigaud Corr. Sci. Men (1841) II. 453 The admirable M. Leibnitz, a German, but a member of the Royal Society, scarce yet middle aged. 1709 Steele Tatler No. 77 ¶2 When I was a middle-aged Man. 1880 G. Meredith Tragic Com. (1881) 81 A middle-aged, grave and honourable man. 1918 W. Owen Let. 22 July (1967) 566, I have no unused boots with me, but I left a delicate middle-aged pair in the Kitchen Cupboard. 1927 [see éclair]. 1940 [see auto n.2 3]. 1950 T. S. Eliot Cocktail Party i. ii. 57 Only since this morning I have met myself as a middle-aged man. 1960 M. Spark Ballad of Peckham Rye vii. 150 The chief barmaid had a tiny nose and a big chin; she was a middle-aged woman of twenty-five. 1974 Broadcast 28 Oct. 20/2 Young men go to bed with young ladies, middle-aged men (presumably) with middle-aged ladies, and old men with very young ladies. |
b. Characteristic of middle-aged people. spec. middle-aged spread, paunchiness in a middle-aged person; also transf. and fig. Cf. middle age n. 3.
| 1886 Lowell Latest Lit. Ess., Gray (1891) 2 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. 1887 Ruskin Præterita II. 269 His already almost middle-aged aspect of serene sagacity. 1931 H. G. Wells Work, Wealth & Happiness of Mankind (1932) xv. 768 Impermanence is the lot of all encyclopædias, and though the Britannica..shows now these marks of advanced maturity, of ‘middle-aged spread’, there is no reason for supposing that the spirit of Diderot is dead. 1942 D. Powell Time to be Born (1943) ii. 43 Erase that middle-aged spread. 1957 J. Braine Room at Top i. 7, I hadn't then begun to acquire a middle-aged spread. 1962 Listener 20 Sept. 450/1 That impish sense of the ridiculous..which..will always stop ‘Tonight’ from acquiring the pompous middle-aged spread that so often accompanies success. |
† 2. Belonging to the Middle Ages; mediæval. Obs.
| 1611 T. James Treat. Corruption of Scripture Advt. to Christian Reader, sig. *2 The open or secret wrongs done vnto Fathers, auncient, middle-aged, or moderne writers, by the Papists. 1710 Hearne Collect. (O.H.S.) III. 49 The reading and perusing of middle-ag'd Antiquities. 1804 Mitford Inquiry 318 Of the modern and middle aged Greek. 1845 Proc. Philol. Soc. II. 145 The English hunger bears a strong resemblance to the Spanish hambre, formed from the middle-aged Latin famina. 1846 Dickens Pictures from Italy 5 The first chapter of a Middle Aged novel. |
Hence middle-ˈagedness.
| 1881 [see agedness 2]. |