Ages

How to spell ages

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ages

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ages mean?

1. nounLong periods of time, or the plural of a person's number of years lived.
2. verbBecomes older or matures over time, said of a person or thing.

Ages in a sentence

• noun

  The renovation took ages, dragging on for nearly two years.

• verb

  The cheese ages in the cellar for eighteen months before sale.

• noun

  The museum displays artefacts from several historical ages.

• verb

  Everyone ages at a different pace, depending on health and habits.

Where does ages come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Latin aetas, meaning 'lifetime' or 'period of life', which was itself a worn-down form of aevum, 'an age' or 'eternity'. From this Latin source came the Old French aage (later spelled age), carrying the sense of the length of time a person had lived. English borrowed the word in the 1200s, and over the centuries it broadened from a single life span to mean any long stretch of time, as in a historical 'age'. The plural and the verbal form simply add an -s, which is why 'ages' covers both several periods of time and the act of growing older. The same aevum root survives in other English words such as 'medieval' (from medium aevum, the 'middle age') and 'longevity'.

How the word is built

• age (period of life or time)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb ending)