age
part of speech
noun (age, ages); verb (age, ages, aged, ageing or aging)
meaning for a pupil
1) Your age is how many years you have lived. tree →
2) An age is a long period of history, like the Stone Age or the Ice Age. tree →
3) «Ages» means a very long time, as in «I waited for ages». tree →
4) To age is to grow older. tree →
sense in the lessons
a number of years; problems compare ages now, in the past and in the future; in history, ages of time; phrases «at the age of», «under age», «for ages», «age group», «the same age»
examples
- Tom's age is 9. tree →
- In 5 years, Mia will be twice her brother's age. tree →
- What is the sum of their ages? tree →
- Her father's age is 4 times her age. tree →
- She learned to read at the age of five. tree →
- Children under the age of 12 need an adult. tree →
- We waited ages for the bus. tree →
- Dinosaurs lived long before the Ice Age. tree →
- My cousin and I are the same age. tree →
- Cheese gets stronger as it ages. tree →
- What respect is shown to old age in these days? tree →
note
An age grows by the same number of years for every person. Trap: «in 5 years» adds 5 to every age, and «5 years ago» takes 5 from every age; the difference between two ages stays the same. «Ages» (a long time) is not a number.
In the corpora
- Some illnesses in old age never go away; doctors call them chronic, and they can be controlled but not cured.
- Running and other exercise release chemicals in the brain that lift mood, and free weekly parkruns are open to all ages.
- Every age had its gossip papers; the screens are new, the gossip is not.
- Rewatching a favourite film is a comfort at any age; grown-ups do it too.
- A grown-up's or teenager's profile on a streaming app shows films for their age, not yours.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «age» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.