核心畫面
You can think of a whole life as a line with 'young' at one end and 'old' at the other. Middle-aged marks the stretch in the middle of that line — roughly 40 to 60 — where youth is behind you but old age is not yet here. Around that middle stretch there also gathers a set of pictures people carry: settled, careful, a little heavier, past the risk-taking years — and English lets the word carry those pictures too.
可以想成把一輩子攤成一條線，一端是「年輕」，另一端是「年老」，middle-aged 就是站在這條線中段的那一塊——…更多收起
可以想成把一輩子攤成一條線，一端是「年輕」，另一端是「年老」，middle-aged 就是站在這條線中段的那一塊——大約四十到六十歲，青春已經過去，但還說不上老。而在這段年紀周圍，人們心裡還附帶了一整組印象：安穩、謹慎、腰圍變寬、不再冒險。英文裡這個字除了指年紀，也常常被拿去指那組印象，所以聽到它時要先分清楚：對方講的是年齡，還是那股「老氣」。原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
middle-agedadj/ˌmɪdl̩ˈeɪd͡ʒd/
- 1
Of or relating to middle age or a middle-ager; neither old nor young.
- The person of interest is a middle-aged man seen acting strangely in the security camera's video.
- The admirable M. Leibnitz, a German, but a member of the Royal Society, scarce yet middle aged.
- 2
Characteristic of middle-aged people.
- Well, perhaps that beige-on-beige color scheme may be a little middle-aged for a young artist's apartment; a little repainting won't hurt anything.
- Cowper was really mad at intervals, but his poetry, admirable as it is in its own middle-aged way, is in need of anything rather than a strait-waistcoat.
- 3
obsoleteBelonging to the Middle Ages; medieval.
- The reading and perusing of middle-ag’d Antiquities.
- Of the modern and middle-aged Greek.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。