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adult
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
adult
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
adult education (=for adults)
▪ They run adult education classes at the local community college.
adult education
an adult learner
▪ Many adult learners also work full-time.
consenting adult
infant/child/maternal/adult mortality
▪ an appallingly high infant mortality rate number of babies who die
responsible adult/citizen
▪ It’s time you started acting like a responsible adult.
the adult population
▪ A third of the adult population pay no tax at all.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
healthy
▪ By implication, the healthy female is not the healthy adult.
▪ In a healthy adult the amount lost in this way is negligible. 2.
▪ It isn't dangerous to a healthy adult or child, but it can be harmful to a foetus.
▪ Figure 2.7 shows the typical patterning of sleep through the night, as shown by a healthy adult.
▪ They compared the finger and palm prints of 64 healthy adult males and 90 males with duodenal ulcers.
mature
▪ Piaget was not the first to draw our attention to the fact that children's behaviour is different from mature adult behaviour.
▪ Nobody told you to flirt with me like a grown mature responsible adult man would do.
responsible
▪ They recognize that their overall goal is to launch their child into the world, as an independent and responsible young adult.
▪ Nobody told you to flirt with me like a grown mature responsible adult man would do.
young
▪ Both videos are sparkling situation comedies written especially for adult and young adult learners.
▪ Q: My 8-year-old has shown an interest in young adult horror books.
▪ Haas, now a gangly young adult, appears to still be acting with Amish reserve.
▪ Depending upon the social circles in which the young adult moves there will be more or less pressure towards getting married.
▪ This creates a real problem in the life of a young adult.
▪ That includes more than £150,000 to projects supervising offenders through the young adult offenders grant scheme.
▪ From the 1840s child and young adult mortality contributed most of the decline.
■ NOUN
education
▪ On the other hand, there were grave limitations in using existing adult education institutions for radical education and action.
▪ Elsewhere, urban centres did not experience the anticipated post-war expansion in liberal adult education.
▪ This category was clearly intended to introduce and promote study opportunities in liberal adult education.
▪ This has always been one of the basic ingredients of good adult education.
▪ This latter ideology is in fact one which runs through most of the liberal adult education tradition in Britain.
▪ Yet community education in working-class communities has not grown to offer a radical alternative to traditional adult education provision.
▪ Organised adult education groups can be found, and the local library may have details of organised parties and expeditions.
▪ Does he agree that there is another worry about separating vocational from non-vocational adult education?
learner
▪ Both videos are sparkling situation comedies written especially for adult and young adult learners.
life
▪ Her whole adult life was a triumph of determination over a body that could have condemned her to permanent invalidism.
▪ Throughout his early adult life he passed from one religious system to another, unable to derive lasting spiritual satisfaction form any.
▪ The data indicate that dimorphism in adult size may be associated with mortality bias differences brought about by dissimilar adult life styles.
▪ Born and raised in San Francisco, the 71-year-old Rosenberg has been preaching philanthropy his entire adult life.
▪ In our own society there is no such clear transition from childhood to adult life.
▪ A whole adult life in only seventeen years.
male
▪ In that year the proportion of convicted adult males given a custodial sentence had reached a low of 15 percent.
▪ On the one hand, Mormonism was partially democratized in that virtually every adult male could be ordained a priest.
▪ They compared the finger and palm prints of 64 healthy adult males and 90 males with duodenal ulcers.
▪ The hunters are the half dozen or so experienced adult males in the group.
mortality
▪ Our model analyses size dimorphism with differential adult mortality.
▪ From the 1840s child and young adult mortality contributed most of the decline.
▪ We argue that selection for dwarfism results from reduced intrasexual competition through high differential adult mortality between the sexes.
population
▪ Higher percentages of the elderly than of the general adult population live in accommodation built before 1919 that is often poorly maintained.
▪ Together, these 60 million people represent more than one third of the entire adult population.
▪ As a whole group they are in relative or absolute poverty, in contrast to the general adult population of working age.
▪ It had a staggering seven hundred thousand members, a figure that counted more than half of the entire adult population.
▪ This meant that the citizens comprised a quarter or less of the total adult population.
suffrage
▪ Congressional elections are by universal and compulsory adult suffrage with one-third of the senators elected indirectly.
▪ All elections are by universal adult suffrage.
▪ There is a unicameral Legislative Assembly of 70 seats, 62 of which are elected by universal adult suffrage for five years.
▪ The unicameral legislature, the National Assembly, is also elected for a five-year term by universal adult suffrage.
▪ There is a Federal Assembly of 42 members, elected by universal adult suffrage for a five-year term.
▪ Legislative authority is now vested in a unicameral National Congress, with 100 members elected for five years by universal adult suffrage.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Children cannot be admitted to the museum unless they are accompanied by an adult.
▪ Prosecutors are seeking to have the 15-year-old defendant tried as an adult.
▪ Since I left school, my parents have started to treat me like an adult.
▪ The cost of the trip is $59 for adults and $30 for children.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ An adult has a vast array of comparatively complex schemata that permit a great number of differentiations.
▪ Ann became a Catholic as an adult and entered the book trade working at a Catholic bookshop in Exeter.
▪ Being responsible for my sons turned me into an adult as had nothing else in the forty years before.
▪ But when I became an adult, I began to see the importance of those abstract principles in a personal way.
▪ Children related to him so much because they saw in him an adult who behaved in the way that they did.
▪ Choice, in almost all its facets, is diminished in the life of an illiterate adult.
▪ The adult replies: Oh, come on.
II.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
child
▪ Many adult children gain great happiness from caring for a much-loved parent in the closing years of their life.
▪ She had two adult children who lived nearby, and had stopped visiting them as was her usual custom.
▪ The couple have three adult children, Henrietta, Andreas and Christopher.
▪ Currently, legal immigrants can sponsor parents, siblings and adult children.
▪ All of a sudden, they have to address parenting issues and deal with their addicted adult children.
female
▪ For instance, an adult female will purr while suckling her kittens and when she courts a male.
▪ Capturing the animals entails shooting the adult females, whose skulls are sold to tourists.
▪ Overall 15 percent of adult females and 12 percent of males defined themselves as carers.
▪ Immature females interacted with adult females primarily when the latter were lactating; immature males did so when they were in oestrus.
▪ Anything, in fact, except a normal, healthy, adult female.
learner
▪ The problem with adult learners is that they already have strategies for grammatical analysis and can efficiently use context in communication.
▪ The unit-based certificate is seen as appropriate for adult learners.
▪ The objective of the Resource Book is to allow your adult learners to pursue their studies in their own time.
life
▪ In his adult life all these painful thoughts had been buried but still caused a great deal of unhappiness.
▪ Rhode Island native Charlie spent the better part of his adult life collecting Elvis Presley memorabilia.
▪ The number of people in this country whose hearing has become impaired in adult life is very large indeed.
▪ A native of Richmond, he lived much of his adult life bouncing around the West Coast via train or sometimes car.
▪ Thus the simple but overall goal is that children should grow up properly equipped for adult life.
▪ For the first time in my adult life, I had played a role that really satisfied me.
▪ This is one reason why hearing impairment in childhood is totally different from hearing loss in adult life.
▪ Gradually, the viewer becomes aware that they represent the three key stages in adult life.
male
▪ Being an adult male, he was at the end of the line for inoculations.
▪ The adult males move in larger home ranges that are superimposed spatially upon those of the females.
▪ Airbags, designed for adult males, may punch outward too forcefully for children and small adults.
▪ Since the population of adult males in Britain is many million, there are obvious savings to be made using these techniques.
▪ The adult males are dark, the females and young are sandy-brown.
man
▪ But the officers also found adolescent girls lodged in hostels with adult men and children living without adults to care for them.
▪ I feel embarrassed, now that I let adult men kneel before me and shine my shoes.
▪ The incidence of severe pancreatitis discharges among adult men also correlated significantly with the alcohol consumption in the country.
▪ Tears had run on his cheeks as she had never seen tears coming from an adult man before.
member
▪ The Council tax is based on the capital value of each property, on the assumption that it contains two adult members.
▪ All major decisions are taken by a general assembly in which each adult member of a kibbutz has the right to vote.
patient
▪ Of 61 adult patients with untreated coeliac disease, 57 had abnormal results giving a sensitivity of 0.93.
▪ These decisions have no application to adult patients.
▪ Considerable rises in the number of adult patients are forecast by the year 2000.
▪ Increasingly, adult patients are achieving independence, careers, and impressive educational attainments.
population
▪ By the summer of 1809 on land and sea, 786,000 men were serving - one in ten of the adult population.
▪ Significantly, the adult populations in Pembrokeshire and Somerset showed similar ranges of variability.
▪ The conventional wisdom in the gay community is that 10 percent of the adult population is gay or lesbian.
▪ They estimate an average annual consumption of 15 litres of whisky per head of the adult population.
▪ Half of the adult population never fully develops formal operational reasoning.
son
▪ He has an adult son, David, and is also a Mid Suffolk district councillor.
▪ She has an adult son and daughter in London.
▪ He was married with two adult sons.
woman
▪ The repression can be total in adult women, hence their frigidity.
▪ The majority are adult women workers in below-average-income families laboring in unskilled jobs, often in the retail sector.
▪ About 40 percent. of Britain's adult women part-time workers would benefit from Labour's proposal for a minimum wage.
▪ I use the word consciously, very much aware that it has been used in the past to demean adult women.
▪ She would listen to him in the way that no adult woman ever would.
▪ Adults, adult women in particular, are subscribing to this expansionism for themselves without question.
▪ We can not adopt a parallel assumption about adult women....
world
▪ When the parents were home in Avon, they maintained an adult world that often excluded the children.
▪ Piggy wanted a sign from the adult world as he thought they were civilised even though they were at war.
▪ Personality formation continues when and if the adolescent begins to adapt the self to the adult world.
▪ With her infant's intuition, Victoria knew that major shifts were taking place in the adult world above her head.
▪ Yet we systematically deny these individuals the opportunity to engage in meaningful ways with the adult world.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
Adult magazines in shops must be kept where children cannot see them.
▪ It was thought that the skull was too small and light to belong to an adult male.
▪ Over 30% of the adult population were illiterate.
▪ Soon the skin of the pupa splits open, and the fully-formed adult butterfly emerges.
▪ The book is intended for adult readers.
▪ The disease can be very serious in adult animals.
▪ The government has announced plans to increase spending on adult education.
▪ You need to deal with your problems in an adult way.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But escalation is not usually associated with adult sexuality.
▪ Forman gives us a version of Flynt as an impish, natural man, the Bart Simpson of the adult publishing world.
▪ From what I saw, the repression all seemed to originate externally, from parents and the rest of adult society.
▪ In his adult life all these painful thoughts had been buried but still caused a great deal of unhappiness.
▪ R: Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
▪ Some former course members have since obtained fulltime teaching posts in adult education.
▪ Ten adult elephants - each with a number painted on it - were successfully moved and released in this fashion.
▪ They attempt to adopt adult word forms and use them with increasing consistency from one occasion to the next.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Adult

Adult \A*dult"\, a. [L. adultus, p. p. of adolescere, akin to alere to nourish: cf. F. adulte. See Adolescent, Old.] Having arrived at maturity, or to full size and strength; matured; as, an adult person or plant; an adult ape; an adult age.

Adult

Adult \A*dult"\, n. A person, animal, or plant grown to full size and strength; one who has reached maturity.

Note: In the common law, the term is applied to a person who has attained full age or legal majority; in the civil law, to males after the age of fourteen, and to females after twelve.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
adult

1530s (but not common until mid-17c.), from Latin adultus "grown up, mature, adult, ripe," past participle of adolescere "grow up, mature" (see adolescent). As a euphemism for "pornographic," it dates to 1958 and does no honor to the word.

adult

"adult person," 1650s, from adult (adj.).

Wiktionary
adult
  1. 1 Fully grown. 2 Intended for or restricted to adults rather than children. 3 Containing material of an explicit sexual nature n. 1 A fully grown human or animal. 2 A human who has reached the legal age of majority. v

  2. (senseid en maturation)(lb en nonstandard rare) To (cause to) be or become an #Noun.

WordNet
adult

adj. (of animals) fully developed; "an adult animal"; "a grown woman" [syn: big, full-grown, fully grown, grown, grownup]

adult
  1. n. a fully developed person from maturity onward [syn: grownup] [ant: juvenile]

  2. any mature animal

Wikipedia
Adult

Biologically, an adult is a human being or other organism that has reached sexual maturity. In human context, the term adult additionally has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a " minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of majority and is therefore regarded as independent, self-sufficient, and responsible.

Human adulthood encompasses psychological adult development. Definitions of adulthood are often inconsistent and contradictory; a person may be biologically an adult, and have adult behavior but still be treated as a child if they are under the legal age of majority. Conversely, one may legally be an adult but possess none of the maturity and responsibility that may define an adult character.

In different cultures there are events that relate passing from being a child to becoming an adult or coming of age. This often encompasses the passing a series of tests to demonstrate that a person is prepared for adulthood, or reaching a specified age, sometimes in conjunction with demonstrating preparation. Most modern societies determine legal adulthood based on reaching a legally specified age without requiring a demonstration of physical maturity or preparation for adulthood.

Adult (band)

Adult (stylized as ADULT.) is an American band from Detroit, Michigan, formed in 1998. The band integrates vocals with drum machines, analog synthesizers and electronic/ punk elements. While popular in their home city of Detroit, they are also very popular in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Adult (album)

, a.k.a. Otona is the second studio album by Japanese alternative rock band Tokyo Jihen, released on January 25, 2006 in Japan through Toshiba EMI/ Virgin Music. The album was produced by the band and Japanese recording engineer Uni Inoue. The album reached number one on the Oricon Weekly Album Chart on February 6, 2006.

Adult (disambiguation)

Adult may refer to:

  • Adult, the mature human developmental stage
    • Sexual maturity
  • Euphemism for risqué or pornographic material
  • Adult (band), rock band from Detroit, Michigan, USA
  • Adulthood (film), a 2008 British film
  • Adult (album), 2006 album by the Japanese band Tokyo Jihen
  • Adulthood (album), a 2011 album by Anita Blay's musical project CocknBullKid

Usage examples of "adult".

It was not until adult life that from an abscess of the groin was expelled what remained of the spelling-book that had been driven into the abdomen during boyhood.

As he studied her sleeping face, he ached inside to stop the car and take hold of her, to whisper her name against her mouth, to tell her how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, so much that already his body-He cursed under his breath, reminding himself that he was closer now to forty than to twenty and that the turbulent, uncontrollable reaction of his body to the merest thought of touching her was the reaction of an immature boy, not an adult man.

It is not easy, however, to induce a child to use an Acousticon at all times, whereas an adult will take the time and trouble necessary to become accustomed to the instrument, and will put up with the slight inconveniences inseparable from its use.

At one time over 90 percent of the adult male population of western society was addicted to it.

This letter, however, gives the adolescent power over a proud and otherwise inaccessible adult woman, whom both he and his father are in love with.

Only later would the hair develop the dark and light bars of the typical agouti coloration of an adult wolf -- if it would at all.

The children were using the equivalent of algebraic reasoning, while adults used geometry.

All experiments of any kin, upon other adults, whether patients or inmates of public institutions or otherwise, if made without direct ameliorative purpose and the intelligent personal consent of the person who is the MATERIAL for the research.

Jeremy, quite dispassionately, that ten or a dozen stings from the stock of these apiaries were very commonly enough to kill an adult human.

It was still difficult to make the mental adjustment to the fact that Cassandra was not a girl but a child-shaped adult, at least as clever and ambitious as Auger and probably more so.

Human scientists believed it to be a separate species until, by chance, some axolotls on exhibition changed into air-breathing adults, as axolotls cut off from water will sometimes do.

He greeted the dragon as Baken had shown him, as an adult greeted a subadult, with a breathy trill and a head bump, then without a pause, he vaulted up into the saddle.

The disposition that suffices for receiving the baptismal grace is the faith and intention, either of the one baptized, if it be an adult, or of the Church, if it be a child.

Holy Communion, as also do those who have been baptized, if they be adults.

But it seems ridiculous that after being baptized, adults who can stand up of themselves and leave the sacred font, should be held up by another.