Other forms: adults
An adult is a fully grown person. Old enough to vote, sign a contract and be blamed for their own decisions.
The line is legal rather than biological, and in most countries it falls at eighteen. The word works as an adjective too, so adult life and adult education both refer to that stage. There is a second and quite different adjective sense, since adult films and adult content mean sexually explicit, which is why the word on a website means something particular. Being an adult about something means behaving sensibly.
1nounadultA fully grown person, legally responsible for themselves.~55%
“The class is for adults only.”
2adjectiverelatingRelating to grown people, or sexually explicit.~45%
“He returned to adult education at fifty.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: grown-up
An adult is somebody who has finished growing. Latin adultus is the past participle of adolescō, to grow up, the same verb behind adolescent: one is still at it, the other has done it.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂el- (grow)
French
adulte
English, today
adult
Built from
Borrowed from French adulte. From French adulte, from Latin adultus (“grown up”), perfect passive participle of adolescō (“to grow up”). Compare adolescent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA