[a. Fr. adolescence (14th c., Littré), ad. L. adolēscentia; see next.] The process or condition of growing up; the growing age of human beings; the period that extends from childhood to manhood or womanhood; youth; ordinarily considered as extending from 14 to 25 in males, and from 12 to 21 in females. Also fig.
c. 1430. Lydg., Bochas, IX. xxv. (1554), 207 b. Afterward in their Adolescence Vertuously to teach them.
1647. Howell, Lett. (1650), I. 423. Those times which we term vulgarly the old world, was indeed the youth or adolescence of it.
1760. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, I. 439. System of education, for the government of my childhood and adolescence.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., IX. XX. xiii. 242. Ballot-Box Influenza! One of the most dangerous Diseases of National Adolescence.
1876. Rogers, Pol. Econ., vii. 2. An infant had its price which rose as the child reached adolescence.
