- mature#
- mature adj Mature, matured, ripe, mellow, adult, grownup are comparable if not often interchangeable because they all bear the same underlying meaning "fully developed."Mature, in its basic use as applied to living things, stresses the completion of development; as applied specifically to persons, it usually implies attainment of the prime of life, when a person is at the height of his powers, physically and mentally{
a great writer of the past is known by the delight $nd stimulus which he gives to mature spirits in the present— Brooks
}{the life has a mature tone, an intellectual alertness, a sense of proportion— Laski
}As applied to things, mature usually equals matured, which implies the completion of a course, process, or period; thus, a matured plan is a fully thought- out plan; a matured wine is one that has been allowed to age properly; a matured note is one that has reached the date when payment is due{must be replaced by the maturer concept that virtue is its own reward— Davies
}{a matured poetic intelligence is often happily fused with the creative beat of poetic imagination— Horace Gregory
}Ripe, though it implies maturity, stresses readiness for use or enjoyment; in its basic sense it is applied chiefly to such things as fruits ready for eating, grains or vegetables ready for harvesting, or seeds ready to germinate. In extended use it often connotes merely readiness or full preparedness for action, activity, or use{ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises— Shak.
}{to be careful, in teaching history, not to obtrude aspects which are interesting to us until the child is ripe for them— Russell
}Sometimes, however, ripe connotes one or more of the characteristics of ripe things, especially ripe fruits, such as ruddiness, plumpness, or richness{Greek sculpture, in its ripe perfection— Binyon
}Mellow stresses either such agreeable qualities associated with ripe or slightly overripe fruits as softness, tenderness, sweetness, or the loss of their opposites, the signs of immaturity, such as hardness, harshness, or bitterness{mellow cheese
}{mellow wine
}{the more mellow and cheerful outlook of his second book— Buchan
}Adult is the equivalent of mature in its application to the physical characteristics of living things{a rhesus monkey ... is infantile 1.5 years, juvenile 6.5 years, and adult some 20 years—La Barre
}It presupposes, however, a clearer line of demarcation, especially when used of human beings. An adult person physiologically is one that has passed beyond adolescence; in law, he is one that has attained his majority{people born in this country who have not been within its borders in all the years of their adult lives— Discovery No. 5
}In extended use adult implies the attainment of that point in development where the weaknesses of immaturity or of imperfection are surmounted{the difference [between Romanticism and Classicism] seems to me rather the difference between the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly and the chaotic— T. S. Eliot
}{people supremely adult and specially schooled to comprehend ideas and employ logic— Flanner
}Grown-up is sometimes used in preference to adult when an antithesis to childish is needed{adults incapable of grown-up behavior
}Antonyms: immature: childishmature vb Mature, develop, ripen, age are used in reference to living, growing things or to things with latent capacity for betterment and mean to come or cause to come to the state of being fit for use or enjoyment. When employed with reference to living things or their specific characters, mature stresses fullness of growth and readiness for normal functioning{in warm climates human beings mature more rapidly than in cold climates
}{in his maturing days, young Warren was a cheerful and attractive personality— S. H. Adams
}{he was matured by six years' practical experience in a New York militia regiment— Robert Lowell
}while develop stresses the unfolding of all that is latent and the attainment of the perfection that is appropriate to the species or is possible to the individual{the kitten's hunting instinct was not yet developed— Russell
}and ripen emphasizes the approach to or the attainment of the peak of perfection{the fruits are now sufficiently ripened
}{there is nothing here of slow bud-ding, of fruits ripening in stillness— Carlos Baker
}{at twenty-three she was still young enough to ripen to a maturer beauty— Glasgow
}Age may equal mature when it is applied to the young{hard work'ages a boy
}but more often and in other contexts, routinely, it implies approach to the period of decline or decay{the leaders of the movement are aging rapidly
}{as the individual matures and then ages, he constantly has to unlearn patterns of response which have ceased to be effective— Linton
}In their extended applications to things with latent capacity for improvement all these terms imply a perfecting with time.Mature suggests that something not fully formed undergoes completing changes{mature a plan
}{an art that toiling ages have but just matured— Cowper
}{his ideas about the novel continued to develop and mature— Cousins
}while develop especially applies to the unfolding into full being or effectiveness of something that is potential, latent, or nebulous{the environment fitted to develop ... a genius at once so subtle and so humane as that of Socrates— Dickinson
}{the sense of fact is something very slow to develop—T. S. Eliot
}Both ripen and age imply a becoming fit for some use, action, or purpose over a period of time.Distinctively, ripen tends to suggest the addition of desirable qualities{time had ripened his life and mellowed its fruits— Brooks
}{the civil law, which was in force in most of the countries of continental Europe and their colonies, was the accepted product of the ripened experience of many centuries of Roman jurisprudence— Encyc. Americana
}while age may suggest the elimination of unwanted qualities{water for tropical fish should be aged by standing long enough for toxic substances to escape
}{aging tends toward the restoration of real equilibrium in the metal, and away from any unstable condition induced by a prior operation— Rusinoff
}but often the two are used without distinction{beef, mutton, venison, and game birds become more tender and palatable by the process of ripening, hanging, aging, or maturing— Ashbrook
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
