Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being adult.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state of being adult.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being an adult.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • I liked the piece; the moment we face our ‘real’ adultness is a tough one.

    In Print 2009

  • It took Linden Lab just two weeks to announce the first such tools: in the near future, land owners will have the ability to ban avatars, which don't have their "adultness" verified.

    Age Verification Makes Sense - A Lot of Sense - SLOG 2007

  • It took Linden Lab just two weeks to announce the first such tools: in the near future, land owners will have the ability to ban avatars, which don't have their "adultness" verified.

    Archive 2007-05-01 2007

  • I had the same quizzical feeling you did, Ben, with Kermode's examples -- and we could easily pull phrases from A Portrait of the Artist that don't seem particularly different in their "adultness" or whatever.

    A Prolegomenon to the Reading of Some Books Labeled YA 2006

  • It's kind of like a twilight of "adultness", no real responsibilities other than cleaning and feeding yourself and not a whole lot of money to do much else.

    Popular Posts Across MetaFilter 2010

  • In a test for "adultness" co-created by the author, the difference between how adults and how teens scored was statistically insignificant: "Age is simply not a reliable measure of adultness," Epstein writes, "at least not once people are past puberty."

    LewRockwell.com 2009

  • It's an old story, of course, that "adultness" attaches to innocuous registrations of queer and same-sex life while different standards attach to heterosexual desires and practices.

    amor mundi 2009

  • Jackson also has a wonderful ear for the eccentricity of child talk, its odd, borrowed adultness, its surreality, its gorgeous self-obsession.

    Seeing The Funny Side « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • How do we know if your adultness test is any good unless it, say, predicts later behavior by the test-taker?

    Abolish High School?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Columbia University, by inviting Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak, has shown confidence in the wisdom and adultness of their students and our republic.

    Thom Hartmann: Columbia University Shows True American Values 2008

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