| 释义 |
ripe old age ripe old ageA very old age. Even at the ripe old age of 90, my grandmother still loves to go shopping. All I want at the end of my life is to die at a ripe old age surrounded by my family.See also: age, old, riperipe old agea very old age. Mr. Smith died last night, but he lived to a ripe old age—99. All the Smiths seem to reach a ripe old age.See also: age, old, riperipe old ageAn age advanced in years, as in I expect to live to a ripe old age. The adjective ripe here means "fully developed physically and mentally," but the current use of the idiom usually just signifies a long lifespan. [Second half of 1300s] See also: age, old, riperipe old ageAdvanced in years, quite old. This expression is itself of a ripe old age—it dates from the second half of the fourteenth century—and is generally used in a positive, admiring sense.W. Somerset Maugham used it in Creatures of Circumstance (1947): “. . . little house in the country where he could potter about till death claimed him at a ripe old age.”See also: age, old, ripe |