| 释义 |
middle-aged, a.
(stress variable)
[f. middle a. + age n. + -ed2.]
1. a. Of middle-age, neither young nor old. Also transf. and fig.
1608Topsell Serpents 73 The elder looke to the family, placing in due order that hony which is gathered and wrought by the middle-aged Bees. 1611Coryat Crudities 252 He was a middle-aged man, as about forty yeares old. 1676Collins 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. 1709Steele Tatler No. 77 ⁋2 When I was a middle-aged Man. 1880G. Meredith Tragic Com. (1881) 81 A middle-aged, grave and honourable man. 1918W. 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]. 1950T. S. Eliot Cocktail Party i. ii. 57 Only since this morning I have met myself as a middle-aged man. 1960M. 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. 1974Broadcast 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.
1886Lowell 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. 1887Ruskin Præterita II. 269 His already almost middle-aged aspect of serene sagacity. 1931H. 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. 1942D. Powell Time to be Born (1943) ii. 43 Erase that middle-aged spread. 1957J. Braine Room at Top i. 7, I hadn't then begun to acquire a middle-aged spread. 1962Listener 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.
1611T. 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. 1710Hearne Collect. (O.H.S.) III. 49 The reading and perusing of middle-ag'd Antiquities. 1804Mitford Inquiry 318 Of the modern and middle aged Greek. 1845Proc. Philol. Soc. II. 145 The English hunger bears a strong resemblance to the Spanish hambre, formed from the middle-aged Latin famina. 1846Dickens Pictures from Italy 5 The first chapter of a Middle Aged novel.
Hence middle-ˈagedness.
1881[see agedness 2]. |
