adolescence, adolescency

[In Fr. adolescence; Ital. adolescenza, fr. Lat. adolescent i a the age of a young person of either sex growing up-twelve to twenty-five in boys, twelve to twenty-one in girls-or, le precisely, fifteen to thirty, or even to thirty-four, forty, or forty-four. From adolesco =to be growing up.] 1. Ordinary Language and Physiology: The state of growing youth; the period of life after the ce ation of infancy when one is growing up to his or her proper height, breadth, and firmne of fibre. In Britain the term of adolescence is generally reckoned to be, in the male sex, from fifteen to twenty five, or even thirty years of age. In females adolescence is reached at an earlier period. "The sons must have a tedious time of childhood and adolescence, before they can either themselves a ist their parents, or encourage them with new hopes of posterity."-Bentley. "He was so far from a boy, that he was a man born, and at his full stature: if we believe Joseph us, who places him in the last adolescency, and makes him twenty-five years old."-Brown. 2. Eng. Law : The period of life between fourteen and twenty-one in males, and twelve and twenty-one in females. (Wharton: Law Lexicon , by Will .)