MATURITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does maturity mean? 

• MATURITY (noun)
  The noun MATURITY has 3 senses:

1. the period of time in your life after your physical growth has stopped and you are fully developed

2. state of being mature; full development

3. the date on which an obligation must be repaid

  Familiarity information: MATURITY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MATURITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The period of time in your life after your physical growth has stopped and you are fully developed

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

adulthood; maturity

Hypernyms ("maturity" is a kind of...):

time of life (a period of time during which a person is normally in a particular life state)

Meronyms (parts of "maturity"):

mid-twenties; twenties (the time of life between 20 and 30)

middle age (the time of life between youth and old age (e.g., between 40 and 60 years of age))

voting age (the age at which a person is old enough to vote in public elections)

drinking age (the age at which is legal for a person to buy alcoholic beverages)

legal age; majority (the age at which persons are considered competent to manage their own affairs)

fifties; mid-fifties (the time of life between 50 and 60)

forties; mid-forties (the time of life between 40 and 50)

mid-thirties; thirties; thirty-something (the time of life between 30 and 40)

teens (the time of life between the ages of 12 and 20)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "maturity"):

prime; prime of life (the time of maturity when power and vigor are greatest)

Derivation:

mature (having reached full natural growth or development)

Sense 2

Meaning:

State of being mature; full development

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

matureness; maturity

Hypernyms ("maturity" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Attribute:

mature (having reached full natural growth or development)

immature (not yet mature)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "maturity"):

adulthood (the state (and responsibilities) of a person who has attained maturity)

ripeness (the state of being ripe)

youth (early maturity; the state of being young or immature or inexperienced)

post-maturity; post-menopause (the state in which women have stopped ovulating)

Antonym:

immaturity (not having reached maturity)

Derivation:

mature ((of birds) having developed feathers or plumage; often used in combination)

mature (having reached full natural growth or development)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The date on which an obligation must be repaid

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

due date; maturity; maturity date

Hypernyms ("maturity" is a kind of...):

date; day of the month (the specified day of the month)

 Context examples 

In humans, this process occurs as the brain develops to full maturity, in the late teens to early adulthood.

(A biological mechanism for schizophrenia, NIH)

Immunostaining confirmed that the iPSC-derived RPE expressed the gene RPE65, suggesting the lab-made cells had reached a crucial stage of maturity necessary to maintain photoreceptor health.

(Researchers rescue photoreceptors, prevent blindness in animal models of retinal degeneration, National Institutes of Health)

A juvenile between the onset of puberty and maturity; in the state of development between puberty and maturity.

(Adolescent, NCI Thesaurus)

The branch of physiology concerned with the changes that take place between fertilization and maturity.

(Developmental Physiology Differentiation/Growth, NCI Thesaurus)

Developmental processes from cell division to embryogenesis to postnatal growth and maturity.

(Embryogenesis, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Saturn is giving you maturity of judgment through a series of tests, but you may have felt at times under trial by fire.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

The maturity of the stars seen in MACS1149-JD1 raises the question of when the very first galaxies emerged from total darkness, an epoch astronomers romantically term “cosmic dawn”.

(ALMA and VLT Find Evidence for Stars Forming Just 250 Million Years After Big Bang, ESO)

Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such maturity and depth of thought.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The branch of cell biology concerned with the cellular changes that take place between fertilization and maturity.

(Developmental Cell Biology, NCI Thesaurus)

The branch of biochemistry concerned with biochemical changes that take place between fertilization and maturity.

(Developmental Biochemistry, NCI Thesaurus)