Adult

How to spell adult

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce adult

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does adult mean?

1. nounA fully grown person who has reached maturity, typically of legal age.
2. adjectiveRelating to or intended for grown people; fully developed or mature.

Adult in a sentence

• noun

  Each ticket admits one adult and two children.

• adjective

  The clinic offers adult dental care on weekday evenings.

• noun

  As an adult, she finally opened her own savings account.

• adjective

  He handled the dispute in a calm, adult manner.

Where does adult come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin adultus, meaning 'grown up' or 'matured', which was the past participle of the verb adolescere, 'to grow up'. That verb was formed from ad-, meaning 'to' or 'towards', and alescere, 'to be nourished' or 'to grow', so the literal idea was of a creature that has finished growing. The very same root gives us 'adolescent', the person still in the process of growing, which is a useful reminder that adult is the finished stage of that journey. English took the word up in the early 1500s, first as an adjective describing something fully grown and then as a noun for a grown person. Because the spelling stays so close to the compact Latin original, it carries no silent letters or doubled consonants, which is why it rarely trips writers up.

How the word is built

• adult- (from Latin adultus, grown up)
• the word entered English with no added affix; built on ad- (to)
• alescere (to grow)