ADULTESCENT noun (ad-uhl-tes-uhnt)

noun
1. a young adult or middle-aged person who has interests, traits, etc., that are usually associated with ****agers.


Quotes

It almost seems as if we’re actively trying to raise a nation of “adultescents.”
--*Elizabeth Kolbert,*"Spoiled Rotten," The New Yorker, July 2, 2012


Adultescent came of age in 2004, but only as a word. The adult it describes is too busy playing Halo 2 on his Xbox or watching SpongeBob at his parents' house to think about growing up.
--*John Tierney,*"Adultescent," New York Times, December 26, 2004



Origin

The informal noun kidult, a combination of kid and adult, which dates from about 1960, has mostly been replaced by the equally informal noun adultescent (from adult and adolescent), which first appears in the mid-1990s.