age out
age out verb: to become too old for an activity, program or institution; to become too mature for a behavior.
Verb
age out (third-person singular simple present ages out, present participle aging out or ageing out, simple past and past participle aged out)
- To become too old for an activity, program or institution; to become too mature for a behavior.
- When foster kids age out of the system, it is important for the state to provide them with support.
- I am aging out of queenship indeed, when even the beggars refuse my bidding.1925, Robinson Jeffers, “THE TOWER BEYOND TRAGEDY; II”, in Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems, New York: Horace Liveright, page 62
- To die or retire.
- The party's chances in the coming election looked grim as a large portion of their voters were going to age out.
Forms of age out
| third-person singular present | ages out |
|---|---|
| present participle | aging out |
| present participle | ageing out |
| past participle | aged out |
| past | aged out |
Origin of age out
Use of the phrasal verb, with adverb out, is analogous to run out. The phrase was likely spread by the Boy Scouts of America, where it is used largely in sense 1 to refer to turning eighteen and becoming ineligible for the youth program.
Questions about age out
- What does age out mean?
- Age out means to become too old for an activity, program or institution; to become too mature for a behavior.
- What part of speech is age out?
- Age out is a verb.
- What is the past tense of age out?
- The past tense of age out is aged out.
Words near age out in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: age out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “age out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/age_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.