[f. FULL adv. + GROWN.] Fully grown; having attained full size or maturity.
1667. Milton, P. L., VII. 456. Innumerous living Creatures … Limb’d and full grown.
1724. De Foe, Mem. Cavalier (1840), 30. When wickedness presented itself full-grown, in its grossest freedoms and liberties, it quite took away all the gust of vice that the devil had furnished me with.
1767. Hunter, in Phil. Trans., LVIII. 43. Fig. II. The same view of the same bone in a full-grown Elephant.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., iii. (1873), 52. In a state of nature almost every full-grown plant annually produces seed, and amongst animals there are very few which do not annually pair.
1871. Blackie, Four Phases, i. 151–2. He [Socrates] had two sons, one full-grown.
transf. 1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., x. (1858), 374. No less than four springs pour their almost full-grown rivers through the plain.
Hence Full-growner colloq. or slang, a full-grown person.
1867. P. Fitzgerald, 75 Brooke St., III. 251. A full growner: no ‘Miss’ at all in the case.
