A woman of a certain age

In a recent message to a much younger acquaintance who had suggested I try texting a mutual friend who had not responded to my efforts to contact her, I wrote

As a "woman of a certain age," I have to admit I am not much into texting, but I have learned to use it for just two people: [this mutual friend] and our plumber! 

Although I use the expression “woman of a certain age” periodically, I wanted to learn more about its source and intended meaning.

I love Google! I very quickly discovered an article written and published 20 years ago by William Safire, the late New York Times political columnist and author of the New York Times Magazine “On Language” column.

ON LANGUAGE; A Woman of a Certain Age

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: July 2, 1995

HOW OLD IS A woman of a certain age?

Only a Nosy Parker would try to find out. But the expression is becoming androgynous, and the age seems to be creeping upward.

Sidney Wade, a woman who lives in Gainesville, Fla., reports that she was complaining to a friend, Debora Greger, about a loss of hair: "My friend remarked that we, as women of a certain age, were prone to a number of peculiar developments. At first I was surprised by her use of the phrase to describe us (we are mildly ripening), remembering it from my more youthful days in France as an insulting kind of polite elocution but one that remains rather wonderful and precise."

Then Ms. Wade was stunned to see a headline in The New York Times "3 Explorers of a Certain Age, Scaling Mountains and More" about three men in their 80's. "Reeling, I reported this to Debora, who supposes that the phrase itself seems to have developed a pronounced middle-aged spread. Is this so? I hope not."

The phrase, in English, can be cited to 1754: "I could not help wishing," wrote an anonymous essayist in Connoisseur magazine, "that some middle term was invented between Miss and Mrs. to be adopted, at a certain age, by all females not inclined to matrimony." (This was two centuries pre-Ms.)

The certain age suggested spinsterhood; the poet Byron in 1817 wrote, "She was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears." Five years later, in a grumpier mood, he returned to the phrase: "A lady of a 'certain age,' which means Certainly aged." Charles Dickens picked it up in "Barnaby Rudge": "A very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age."

The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as "which it is not polite or necessary further to define." That was the sense meant by William Dean Howells when he wrote of "gentlemen approaching a certain weight." The special sense reverses the literal meaning of the word certain, which is "fixed, definite" (much as "I could care less" means "I could not care less").

The phrase was repopularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, "Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self," in which midlife spanned 35 to 54.

Reached in San Francisco, Dr. Rubin, whose book indicates she is now in her early 70's, was surprised to learn of the long English history of the phase because "it has a long history in French, where it refers to women of fortyish and thereabouts who are able to initiate boys and young men into the beauties of sexual encounters. The early use in English seems to be about spinsterhood, but the French meaning has nothing to do with marriage."

In French, the phrase has erotically or sexually charged overtones. "It comes from a society where sexuality is freer," Dr. Rubin notes, "and more understood as an important part of human life."

The phrase in French is femmes d'une certaine age. The term, however, can apply to either sex. Without the certain, the phrase un homme d'un age translates literally as "a man of an age" and is defined in the Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary as "a man of advanced years."

And now to the point: is that certain age getting older?

"When I wrote the book in 1979," Dr. Rubin says, "the 'women of a certain age' were in their late 30's and early 40's. I think that has changed with the baby boomers and the lengthening of the life span. I'd say the 'certain age' has now moved to the age of 50 or 55."

Look at it this way: late 30's or early 40's is no longer that "certain" age; it's moved up a decade. The good news is that 40 is still young, at least linguistically. That's how it seems to a language maven of a certain weight and getting long in the tooth.

Which brings us to long in the tooth, which I used in a political column in an unkind reference to vigorous Senator Bob Dole. (The first user was William Makepeace Thackeray in an 1852 novel: "She was lean, and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toyshops of London could not make a beauty of her.") In my piece, I was impelled by wordmavenhood to give the derivation of the expression: "As horses age, their gums recede, making their teeth appear longer." My source was the Oxford English Dictionary: "displaying the roots of the teeth owing to the recession of the gums with increasing age; hence gen., old."

This folk wisdom about the illusion of tooth-lengthening was promptly challenged by Michael Brisbane McCrary, former Hong Kong polo player and now a squire in Hunter, N.Y.: "Horses actually do get 'long in the tooth.' It is not receding gums; their teeth continue to grow out (like beavers, and there is a word for it beginning with 'ex-') throughout their lives until the teeth actually fall out."

Mr. McCrary (his wife is Jane Buckle; her long-panted-for book, "How to Massage Your Dog," is scheduled for publication this fall) continues: "The growth of the horses' teeth is required because they would wear down in the process of eating in a natural setting. As the teeth grow out, lines show; this is how one usually tells the age of a horse. And this is the background to the phrase 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'; i.e., if it is a gift, don't ask how old it is."

That moved me to call the National Zoo. I don't call the Bronx Zoo anymore; any zoo that calls itself a "wildlife center" cannot be trusted. (A spokesman at our national zoological park, Mike Morgan, remembered me as the one who revealed the reason that pandas have reduplicating names like Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing they can't hear well and zoo keepers have to call them twice.)

It seems that Mr. McCrary could be right and all of us lexicographers could be wrong. "As horses age," noted Dr. Richard Montali, one of the National Zoo's veterinarians, "their teeth actually do continue to grow for some time. The incisors appear to look longer, but it's mainly because the angle of the teeth changes. Instead of perpendicular growth, the teeth angle out as they grow and wear."

Maybe the gums recede a little as the growing teeth angle out; that's why horses' teeth reveal their age. As a result of receiving this new information, and with deference to animal rights groups, I will no longer refer to old horses as being long in the tooth. They are horses of a certain age.

Dr. Lillian Rubin (above) notes that back in the 1970’s, “women of a certain age” were in their late 30’s and early 40’s. By the late 1990’s, when Mr. Safire wrote this piece, the definition had shifted to include women who were 50-55. Another twenty years have now passed, and once again the definition has shifted to include women who are well into their 60’s. We baby boomers do have to take ownership of all social change, don’t we?

On a sadder note, BB King died on Friday at age 89. Barry’s and my very first “real” date (as opposed to hanging out on the campus of the University of Rochester) was to a BB King concert in New York in the summer of 1971. We have seen him a number of times over the years and always enjoyed his concerts.  

So go out and do something that makes you feel young again, and have a wonderful week!

Love,

Rebecca