Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to middle age.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having lived to the middle, of the ordinary age of man. By a middle-aged man is generally understood a man from the age of forty to fifty.

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

  • adjective Being about the middle of the ordinary age of man; early in the century, it was considered between 30 and 50 years old, but by the end of the 19th centruy it was considered as 40 to 60.

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

  • adjective of, or relating to middle age; neither old nor young

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective being roughly between 45 and 65 years old

Etymologies

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Examples

  • By the time I was convinced that the term middle-aged child is not an oxymoron, I also felt comfortable with the Middle Ages.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • By the time I was convinced that the term middle-aged child is not an oxymoron, I also felt comfortable with the Middle Ages.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • My adoption of the term middle-aged child has been helped by my establishing a relationship between the child, ages eight through twelve, and the Middle Ages.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • My adoption of the term middle-aged child has been helped by my establishing a relationship between the child, ages eight through twelve, and the Middle Ages.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • Even in the presence of William and Harry, she called middle-aged Papa “the Boy Wonder.”

    William and Kate Christopher Andersen 2011

  • Even in the presence of William and Harry, she called middle-aged Papa “the Boy Wonder.”

    William and Kate Christopher Andersen 2011

  • This shadow matched the lines around my eyes, the ones that I called my middle-aged specialty loops.

    Wars Meg Pokrass 2011

  • It was at another museum, the Worcester Museum of Art, that I became a true believer in the term the middle-aged child.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • It was at another museum, the Worcester Museum of Art, that I became a true believer in the term the middle-aged child.

    TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg 1995

  • Twenty-seven is a dangerous age for a woman not to be married, only two years shy of Natalia from Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, who, as everyone knows, is described as middle-aged.

    A Mountain of Crumbs Elena Gorokhova 2010

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