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middle-aged man

middle-aged man

29 2.1
A man around 45 to 65 years old
  • noun
translation icon : hombre de mediana edad
  • Then he saw the poker game: five grizzled, middle-aged men sitting around a card table.

But like he, she now looks like a a balding middle-aged man.

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Examples

  • The office door opens in the background, and a short middle-aged man in a dark suit emerges.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • A line of exhausted, bleary-eyed middle-aged men in expensive suits and in need of a shave.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • For your information, I am not a middle-aged man.

  • "You two sure were lucky," a middle-aged man in the crowd called out.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • In 1997, I was a quiet middle-aged man knocking on 40.

  • Morgan, I'm a middle-aged man who never leaves the house.

  • I'm an overweight, middle-aged man.

  • Her companion, I noticed, was a handsome middle-aged man who seemed very tall and strongly built.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • I once observed an encounter between a well-dressed middle-aged man and a young, dirty street girl.

    Academic text (2009)
  • The middle-aged man enjoyed telling stories about his youth to his grandchildren.

Synonyms

fortysomething
vsmiddle-aged man
1 3.2

Being between forty and forty-nine years old

is older and covers ages roughly forty five to sixty five
fiftysomething
vsmiddle-aged man
4.6

A person between fifty and fifty-nine years old

is broader and covers ages roughly forty five to sixty five

Antonyms

1.0

A male who is a teenager or a young adult

How Old

old man
380 1.0
middle-aged man
29 2.1
young man
1.0
teenager
885 1.0

Surface Forms

Morphology

middle-aged + man

The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'middle-aged' (describing someone in midlife) with 'man' (an adult male), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to an adult male in the middle-age period. This is a straightforward adjective+noun composition common across languages and does not require idiomatic or metaphorical knowledge.

Etymology

Middle-aged man shows a middle-aged man standing in the middle of life, not young and not old. That's why it means 'a man about 45 to 65 years old'.