Word Direct Answers

What does "mature" mean?

Mature: Completely worked out; fully digested or prepared; ready for action; made ready for destined application or use; perfected; as, a mature plan. This lies glowing, . . . and is almost mature for the violent breaking out. Shak.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Of or pertaining to a condition of full development; as, a man of mature years.
  2. 3.Come to, or in a state of, completed suppuration. -- Mature, Ripe. Both words describe fullness of growth. Mature brings to view the progressiveness of the process; ripe indicates the result. We speak of a thing as mature when thinking of the successive stayes through which it has passed; as ripe, when our attention is directed merely to its state. A mature judgment; mature consideration; ripe fruit; a ripe scholar.
  3. 4.To bring or hasten to maturity; to promote ripeness in; to ripen; to complete; as, to mature one's plans. Bacon.
  4. 5.To advance toward maturity; to become ripe; as, wine matures by age; the judgment matures by age and experience.
  5. 6.Hence, to become due, as a note.

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