> as lemmas

c1480 (a1400) St. Ninian 609 in W. M. Metcalfe Legends Saints Sc. Dial. (1896) II. 321 Þe tyme..þat he of þis lyf suld pas, of parfit dat & rype elde.

1563 N. Winȝet Certain Tractates (1890) II. 58/17 Quhat euery thingis thai ar quhilkis be proces of the rypear aige ar generit [etc.].

1567 W. Painter Palace of Pleasure II. xxiv. f. 209 So that shame separate from before the eyes of youth, riper age noursed in impudency, their sight is so daseled, as they can see nothing that either shame or feare can make them blush.

1627 in J. Hunter Diocese & Presbytery Dunkeld (1918) II. 369 Whyles to the..hazarding off the lyffis off these off ryper age.

1665 T. Herbert Some Years Trav. (new ed.) 243 He died at a ripe age and was buried at Persepolis.

1711 Ld. Shaftesbury Characteristicks I. iii. 333 As if a Homer or a Xenophon imperfectly learnt, in raw years, might not afterwards, in a riper Age, be study'd.

1785 W. Cowper Task iv. 713 At so ripe an age As twice sev'n years.

1824 Ld. Byron Don Juan: Canto XV lxx. 40 Also the younger men too; for a springald Can't like ripe age in gourmandise excel.

1884 Chambers's Jrnl. 10 May 293/1 Zeno hanged himself at the ripe old age of ninety-eight.

1923 National Geographic Mag. Jan. 49/1 Some of the wares on the shelves seem as if they might have attained a ripe old age before Columbus set out on his famous voyage.

1989 J. Updike Self-consciousness iii. 101 Nevertheless, both cats lived to a ripe age. They outlived my tenancy with my family, in fact.

2007 H. Swanson Super Nat. Cooking 87 One of my favourite stories is the legend of..a Chinese man who faithfully ate gojis and lived to the ripe old age of 252.