adulthood

adulthood — noun

1. the stage of life that begins once a person has finished growing up and is treat

1.nounB2
Definition

the stage of life that begins once a person has finished growing up and is treated by society as fully grown, with the rights and duties that come with it.

Example

Hyun moved out of his parents' house and stepped firmly into adulthood.

into + adulthood for crossing into a new life stage

Many young people reach adulthood without ever learning how to cook a simple meal.

reach + adulthood collocation

Common collocations
  • reach adulthood
  • enter adulthood
  • early adulthood
  • young adulthood
  • late adulthood
  • transition to adulthood
Synonyms
  • maturity

    more about mental and emotional ripeness; adulthood is more about age and legal status

  • majority

    formal/legal — the moment one becomes legally adult, not the whole period

  • manhood

    male-specific and somewhat literary, often emphasising identity rather than age

  • womanhood

    female-specific counterpart to manhood, with a similar literary feel

Antonyms
  • childhood

    the years of life before adulthood begins

  • infancy

    the very earliest years of life, well before adulthood

  • adolescence

    the teenage years that sit between childhood and adulthood

Grammar Patterns

reach + adulthood

into + adulthood

throughout + adulthood

Usage Note

Almost always uncountable and used without an article, since it names a life period rather than a single thing. Frequently appears with prepositions of motion or duration (‘into adulthood’, ‘throughout adulthood’, ‘during adulthood’), and is often modified by a stage word (‘early’, ‘young’, ‘late’).

Common Mistakes

She reached the adulthood at twenty.
She reached adulthood at twenty.
adulthood is uncountable, so no ‘the’ is needed before it.
He has lived through two adulthoods.
He has lived through two distinct phases of adulthood.
adulthood is not pluralised; use ‘phases of adulthood’ to talk about multiple stages.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four words point to being grown up, but they emphasise different things. ‘Adulthood’ is the most neutral and most commonly used in everyday English; it names the whole life period after a person has stopped growing, regardless of gender, as in ‘She reached adulthood feeling unprepared for work’. ‘Maturity’ shifts the focus from age to inner development — a wise teenager can show maturity, while an immature person can be in adulthood without it. ‘Majority’ is a narrow legal term for the moment a person reaches the age set by law (often eighteen), as in ‘On reaching her majority, she inherited the estate’. ‘Manhood’ is gender-specific and often literary or ceremonial (‘the long road to manhood’). So you reach adulthood by age, majority by law, manhood by tradition, and maturity by character.

adulthood ↗maturity ↗majority ↗manhood ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • age of adulthood
  • threshold of adulthood
  • years of adulthood

Adverbs

Phrases

  • reach adulthood
  • enter adulthood
  • early adulthood
  • young adulthood
  • late adulthood
  • transition to adulthood

Prepositions

  • in adulthood
  • into adulthood
  • throughout adulthood
  • during adulthood

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Adulthood is built from the Latin-rooted noun ‘adult’ — from ‘adultus’, the past participle of ‘adolescere’, meaning ‘to grow up’ — plus the native English suffix ‘-hood’, which forms nouns naming a state, condition, or period of life (as in ‘childhood’ and ‘neighbourhood’). The word entered English in the mid-1800s, noticeably later than ‘childhood’, once writers needed a parallel term for the post-childhood years.