Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday April 23, 2003
nonage \NON-ij; NOH-nij\ , noun:
1. The time of life before a person becomes legally of age.
2. A period of youth or immaturity.
He was an adept in politics, even in his nonage, and an accomplished statesman before the laws regarded him as a man.
-- Anne Hamilton, The Epics of the Ton
In these journals of Thoreau's nonage, now restored to us in their full text for the first time, we walk among the young Thoreau's thoughts much more often than in the fields and woods surrounding Concord.
-- Leon Edel, "The Very Young Thoreau", New York Times, December 20, 1981
It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Nonage comes from non- (from Latin) + age, from Old French aage, eage, from Latin aetas, "age."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for nonage
