Word.ws English Dictionary

ages of reason

ages of reason is the plural of age of reason.

Meaning of age of reason

Noun

age of reason (usually uncountable, plural ages of reason)

  1. (usually) Seven years of age, at which age a person is morally liable for the sins that they commit.
    • Book 1:
      Reason alone teaches us to know good and bad. . . . Before the age of reason we do good and bad without knowing it, and there is no morality in our actions. . . . A child wants to upset everything he sees; he smashes, breaks everything he can reach.
      Book 4:
      We hold that no child who dies...1762, Jean Jacques Rousseau, translated by Allan Bloom, Émile, or, on Education
  2. (broadly, usually) Age at which a person is able to distinguish right from wrong and make their own decisions.

See all 3 meanings of age of reason

Questions about ages of reason

What is ages of reason the plural of?
Ages of reason is the plural of age of reason.

Words near ages of reason in the dictionary

  1. ages like wine
  2. ages of consent
  3. ages of discretion
  4. ages of majority
  5. Ages of Man
  6. ages of reason
  7. ages out
  8. ages up
  9. Agesilaus
  10. ageslong
  11. agest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ages of reason (page history and authors); age of reason (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.

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