Learn English – Around how old is “a woman of a certain age”

expressionsidiomsmeaningphrases

"A woman of a certain age" is a common saying.

It means more than "a woman of a given age", "a woman who could be any age" or "female, without respect to age". It's usage instead seems to suggest a much more specific period of life.

Around what age is a woman "of a certain age"?

Best Answer

Of a certain age:

  • who are not young:

    • Adults of a certain age might want to spend a couple of hundred dollars more for a larger monitor that will be much easier on their eyes.

Usage notes:

  • used to avoid saying middle aged or old.

Used also in a humorous sense:

Somebody of a certain age:

  • used to avoid saying that a person, usually a woman, is no longer young but is not yet old.

    • It's a clothes boutique which caters for women of a certain age.

(Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms)

From A woman of a certain age

  • The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as "which it is not polite or necessary further to define." That was the sense meant by William Dean Howells when he wrote of "gentlemen approaching a certain weight." The special sense reverses the literal meaning of the word certain, which is "fixed, definite" (much as "I could care less" means "I could not care less").

  • The phrase was repopularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, "Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self," in which midlife spanned 35 to 54.

According to etymonline usage is from mid-18th century:

  • Euphemistic use (of a certain age, etc.) attested from mid-18c.

It is probably worth noting the usage divergence between the two expressions from the '80s. Ngram: women of a certain age vs men of a certain age.

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