Word.ws English Dictionary

coming of age

coming of age noun: a person's journey from childhood or adolescence to adulthood.

Noun

coming of age (usually uncountable, plural comings of age)

  1. (usually) A person's journey from childhood or adolescence to adulthood.
  2. (figuratively, usually) A maturation; a transition from an inchoate state to a developed state.
    • Reasoning of this sort presumes that a significant group in the population has become aware not only of its own existence, but of its rights and power. The riot, I can't help feeling, marks a kind of political coming of age for homosexuals in San Francisco and, vicariously, throughout, the country.1979 June 9, Paul Robinson, “Gays in the Streets”, in The New Republic

Forms of coming of age

pluralcomings of age

Questions about coming of age

What does coming of age mean?
Coming of age means a person's journey from childhood or adolescence to adulthood.
What part of speech is coming of age?
Coming of age is a noun.
What is the plural of coming of age?
The plural of coming of age is comings of age.

Words near coming of age in the dictionary

  1. coming it strong
  2. coming knocking
  3. coming low
  4. coming naturally
  5. coming of
  6. coming of age
  7. coming off
  8. coming off it
  9. coming off second best
  10. coming on
  11. coming on over

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coming of age (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: “coming of age.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coming_of_age. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.