Definition of "age" []

• The length of time that one has existed; duration of life: 23 years of age. (noun)
• The time of life when a person becomes qualified to assume certain civil and personal rights and responsibilities, usually at 18 or 21 years; legal age: under age; of age. (noun)
• One of the stages of life: the age of adolescence; at an awkward age. (noun)
• The state of being old; old age: hair white with age. (noun)
• A period in the history of humankind marked by a distinctive characteristic or achievement: the Stone Age; the computer age. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "People may differ in other respects as to the designation by which the age should be characterized; but we believe all will agree that it is a _tax-hating age_."
• "At twenty-one they attain the age of majority, when they are said to be _of age_."
• "But the same term is here applied to objects of the same kind, differing not essentially even in age; we say _age_, inasmuch as in the three great divisions, or periods, of human life, namely, childhood, youth, and maturity, the characteristic conditions of each are so"