Maturity

How to spell maturity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce maturity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maturity mean?

1. nounThe state of being fully grown, developed, or emotionally adult.
2. nounThe date on which a loan, bond, or insurance policy becomes due for payment.

Maturity in a sentence

• The young manager handled the crisis with surprising maturity.

• The bond pays out its full value at maturity.

• Emotional maturity takes years to develop fully.

• She held the savings certificate to maturity rather than cashing it early.

Where does maturity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin maturitas, meaning 'ripeness' or 'the right moment', which was built on the adjective maturus, literally 'ripe' or 'timely' and originally used of fruit ready to be picked or of a season at its proper point. The same root gave Latin its sense of things arriving exactly on time, which is why the Romans applied maturus to people and events that had come to full readiness, not just to crops. English took the word in through Old French maturite during the late 1300s and early 1400s, first in the literal sense of ripeness and the medical sense of a sore coming to a head. From there it broadened to the modern idea of full mental or physical development, and the financial sense (a debt reaching the date when it falls due) draws directly on the older meaning of something arriving at its appointed time. The everyday word 'mature' shares the same stem, and remembering matur- plus -ity helps fix the single t and the -ity ending in the spelling.

How the word is built

• matur- (from Latin maturus: ripe, timely)
• -ity (noun suffix: state or quality of)