Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Puberty   /pjˈubərti/   Listen
Puberty

noun
1.
The time of life when sex glands become functional.  Synonym: pubescence.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Puberty" Quotes from Famous Books



... of torture. They protected all persons of illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers, and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under the age of puberty. But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended, and all conditions were reduced to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... households and schools, teachers and doctors, and all such attendant services will flow up the mountain masses, and ebb again when the September snows return. It is essential to the modern ideal of life that the period of education and growth should be prolonged to as late a period as possible and puberty correspondingly retarded, and by wise regulation the statesmen of Utopia will constantly adjust and readjust regulations and taxation to diminish the proportion of children reared in hot and stimulating conditions. These high mountains will, in the bright sweet summer, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... sexual self-control goes down to the foundations of character, and has practical value only in those whose self-control is the expression of a lifelong habit of self-discipline bred in the bone from childhood, not merely painted on the surface at puberty. Those who want their sons and daughters never to know by personal experience the meaning of syphilis must first build a foundation in character for them which will make self-control in them instinctive, almost automatic. Knowledge of sexual matters has power ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... the exogamous divisions of the Bhunjias are derived from those of the Gonds. Among the Chaukhutias it is considered a great sin if the signs of puberty appear in a girl before she is married, and to avoid this, if no husband has been found for her, they perform a 'Kand Byah' or 'Arrow Marriage': the girl walks seven times round an arrow fixed in the ground, and is given away without ceremony to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... be prosperous." After fording the stream, we sat down to rest, and were visited by all the inhabitants, who were more naked than any people we had yet seen. All the maidens, even at the age of puberty, did not hesitate to stand boldly in front of us—for evil thoughts were not in their minds. From this we rose over a stony hill to the settlement of Vihembe, which, being the last on the Usui frontier, induced me to give our guides ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... portion of the education of the young man is left to the direction of the man himself. The epoch of entire liberty is a dangerous period, and calls upon him for all his discretion, that he may not make an ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of sublunary blessings. The season of puberty also, and all the excitements from this source, "that flesh is heir to," demand the utmost vigilance and the strictest restraint. In a word, if we would counteract the innate rebelliousness of man, that indocility of mind which is at all times at hand to plunge us into folly, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... achievement. The real value of a brave to his tribe begins with the support of his squaw, and the modern boy gets his importance among us, when, because of bodily function, he awakens to the consciousness of the meaning of the home. This comes gradually at puberty or adolescence with the knowledge of the sex purpose. And it is the quality of this knowledge, its purity and fear and regard, that makes the lad a worthy member of the larger whole, or ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... called, is meant the monthly hemorrhage that takes place in the uterus or womb during the child-bearing period of the normal woman except during pregnancy and lactation, when it nearly always is suspended. The child-bearing period commences at the age of puberty and ends with ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... of this from the handmaids of Damayanti, regarded the affair of his daughter to be serious. And he asked himself, "Why is it that my daughter seemeth to be so ill now?" And the king, reflecting by himself that his daughter had attained to puberty, concluded that Damayanti's Swayamvara should take place. And the monarch, O exalted one, (invited) all the rulers of the earth, saying, Ye heroes, know that Damayanti's Swayamvara is at hand. And all the kings, hearing of Damayanti's Swayamvara, came unto Bhima, agreeable to ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... teaches all about sexual morality; how men and women should live; the law from the age of puberty to marriage; the law of marriage; what a man who truly loves a woman will do; a true union; how women are protected; the false and the true sense of duty; what is the most powerful ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... consists in this, that it is struggling, fumbling, to say something: that is, to make something. It is not, like modern Jargon, trying to dodge something. English prose, in short, just here is passing through a period of puberty, of green sickness: and, looking at it historically, we may own that its throes are commensurate with the stature of the grown man ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... species of perpetual servitude, which is supported by late statutes and by daily practice, viz. That which takes place with regard to the coaliers and sailers, where, from the single circumstance of entering to work after puberty, they are bound to perpetual service, and sold along with the works.' Ferguson's Additional Information, July 4, 1775, pp. 3; 29; and Maclaurin's Additional Information, April 20, 1776, p. 2. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... singardema, prudenta. Prune cxirkauxhaki. Prune seka pruno. Pruning shears brancxotondilo. Prussian, a Pruso. Prussic acid ciana acido. Pry sercxi, rigardeti. Psalm psalmo. Psalmody psalmokantado. Psalter psalmaro. Pseudonym pseuxdonomo. Psychology psikologio. Puberty virigxo. Public publika. Publican drinkejmastro. Public-house drinkejo. Publicity publikigo, publikigeco. Publish publikigi, eldoni. Puerile infana. Puff blovi. Puff up plenblovi. Pug-dog mopseto. Pull tiri. Pull out eltiri. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... may be married to inanimate objects as already seen, or to an old man or a relative without any intention that she shall live with him as a wife, but simply so that she may be married before reaching puberty. If she goes through the ceremony of marriage she is held to be married. Yet the motive for infant-marriage is held to be that a girl should begin to bear children as soon as she is physically capable of doing so, and such a marriage is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... professional rhetoricians delivered on all important occasions in life. The new-born child was harangued at, in good set terms, when it was but a few days old. Betrothals, marriages, festivals, the commencement of puberty and of pregnancy, etc., were all celebrated by the delivery of discourses. Fathers taught their children, teachers their pupils, monarchs their vassals, war chiefs their soldiers, by such declamations. The general name for these speeches ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton

... the placenta was religiously venerated, and they carefully buried it, lest it should be injured or devoured by animals. If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive with her. When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certain ceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions. Funeral rites were simple: the corpse was either burnt, with howls and superstitious functions, or ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... physicians. It was also the one method of birth control countenanced by the ecclesiastics. Women are learning from experience and specialists are discovering by investigation that the "safe period" is anything but safe for all women. Some women are never free from the possibility of conception from puberty to the menopause. Others seemingly have "safe periods" for a time, only to become pregnant when they have begun to feel secure in their theory. Here again, continence must give way, as a method ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... that, with them, every one who is not judged utterly unfit is duly initiated; whereas, with us, the higher education is offered to some who are unfit, whilst many who are fit never have the luck to get it. The initiation-custom is intended to tide the boys over the difficult time of puberty, and turn them into responsible men. The whole of the adult males assist in the ceremonies. Special men, however, are told off to tutor the youth—a lengthy business, since it entails a retirement, perhaps for six months, into the bush with their ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... children stay with their mothers; but from the age of four on the boys spend most of their time in the gamal, while the girls remain under their mother's care. Clothes are not worn by the boys till they have joined the Suque, which, in some cases, takes place long after puberty. The girls seem to begin to wear something whenever the mother thinks fit, generally between the ages of four and seven. From that moment every connection between brother and sister ceases; they may not speak to each other, not meet on the road, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... their homes; in fact they seem to be people always in flight. Their wives live in these waggons, and there weave their miserable garments; and here too they sleep with their husbands, and bring up their children till they reach the age of puberty; nor, if asked, can any one of them tell you where he was born, as he was conceived in one place, born in another at a great distance, and brought up in another still ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... begins at about fourteen or fifteen years of age, this period being known as "the age of puberty." It is preceded and attended by peculiar signs. The whole figure becomes more plump and round, the hips increase in breadth, and the breasts rapidly develop. The more striking changes, however, occur in the ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... should only be allowed under adequate medical control, and should be increased very gradually. In the case of girls, let them run, leap and climb with their brothers for the first twelve years or so of life. But as puberty approaches, with all the change, stress and strain dependent thereon, their lives should be appropriately modified. Rest should be enforced during the menstrual periods of these earlier years, and milder, more ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... system of seclusion of either boys or girls on attaining puberty, or in connection with initiation, or on attaining a marriageable age. Nor is there any initiation ceremony, or wearing of ceremonial masks, or use of bull-roarers. The custom by which chiefs' children, when assuming the perineal band, are made to stand on a platform reminds one, however, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... are monogamists, and generally are forced by the parents to marry before the age of puberty, but the bridegroom, or his father or elder, has to purchase the bride at a price mutually agreed upon by the relations. These people live in cabins on posts or trees 60 to 70 feet from the ground, and defend themselves from the attacks of their traditional enemies, the Guinaanes, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... men of Sodom, both old and young, flock to Lot's house? Is it likely that every male in the city, past the age of puberty, should burn with unnatural lust at one and the same time? Did they suppose that all of them could abuse the two strangers? The story is as ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... an accomplished thief, he pillaged shop and cellar, and sold his plunder in remote parts of the town under assumed names. It is difficult to understand how his strength supported the fatigue of this double existence; he had barely arrived at puberty, and art had been obliged to assist the retarded development of nature. But he lived only for evil, and the Spirit of Evil supplied the physical vigour which was wanting. An insane love of money (the only passion ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... that purpose; when she was seized by orders from her husband, and thrown into confinement. Thus, Europe saw with astonishment the best and most indulgent of parents at war with his whole family; three boys, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, required a great monarch, in the full vigour of his age and height of his reputation, to dethrone himself in their favour; and several princes not ashamed to support them in these unnatural and ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... or rudimentary in the other, but that their development is connected with the functional maturity and activity of the gonads. There is usually an early immature period of life in which the male and female are similar, and then at the time of puberty the somatic sexual characters of either sex, generally most marked in the male, develop. In some cases, where the activity of the gonads is limited to a particular season of the year, the sexual characters or organs are ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... life of the boy or girl, the possibilities for stuttering or stammering to secure a firm hold on their muscular and nervous system are very great. Next to the age of second dentition, children at the age of puberty are most susceptible to stammering ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... had arrived at the age of puberty, when male nature asserts itself in the most timid, and finds means of getting its legitimate pleasure with women. I did, and then my recollection of things became more perfect, not only as to the consummations, but of what led to them; yet nothing seems to me so remarkable as the way I recollect ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... nor girls discover, in the world into which they are growing up, any truly helpful ideas of what it is comely to be and to think. Lingering peasant notions of personal fitness and of integrity keep them from going viciously wrong, so that when they come to puberty their perplexed spirits are not quite without guidance; yet, after all, the peasant conditions are gone, and seeing that the new wage-earning conditions do not, of themselves, suggest worthy ideas of personal bearing, the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... learn To plague themselves withal, they know not why: 'T was strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 't was philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... properly restrained, retarded, and directed. This mysterious instinct develops earlier in proportion as the eye and the imagination are soonest furnished the materials upon which it thrives; and, long before the age of puberty, it is strong, and well-nigh ungovernable, in those who have been allowed these unfortunate occasions. The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of this instinct at the age of fifteen, than, under proper training, he should ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... from the age of puberty to his marriage was, indeed, a fight against temptations to unchastity. Is it anything else in the case of other men? The physical effects of adolescence, as we remarked before, are a natural and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... generally speaking the native women seldom have more than four children, or if they have, few above that number arrive at the age of puberty. There are, however, several reasons why the women are not more prolific; the principal of which is that they suckle their young for such a length of time, and so severe a task is it with them to rear their offspring that the child is frequently destroyed at ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... Between Heaven and Earth 1. Not to touch the Earth 2. Not to see the Sun 3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty 4. Reasons for the Seclusion ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... kiss every evening, he used to carry the icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams. One day in passing a half-open door he had caught sight of a maidservant washing herself, and that was the solitary recollection which had in any way troubled his peace of mind from the days of puberty till the time of marriage. Afterward he had found his wife strictly obedient to her conjugal duties but had himself felt a species of religious dislike to them. He had grown to man's estate and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, in the humble observance ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... was the women of the "baser sort," who yielded without difficulty to the solicitations of the sailors. "Some of them," says he, "who came on board for this purpose, seemed not to be above nine or ten years old, and had not the least marks of puberty. So early an acquaintance with the world seems to argue an uncommon degree of voluptuousness, and cannot fail of affecting the nation in general. The effect, which was immediately obvious to me, was the low stature of the common class of people, to which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... "Every boy and girl, before reaching the age of puberty should have a knowledge of sex, and every man and woman before the marriageable age should be informed on the subject of reproduction and the dangers of venereal diseases. Superficial information is not true education. ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... follow:—"From minute enquiries, and a curious inspection, I am able to declare (however respectable I may hold the authority of these historians in other points), that their assertions are erroneous, and proceeding from a want of a thorough knowledge of the customs of the Indians. After the age of puberty, their bodies, in their natural state, are covered in the same manner as those of the Europeans. The men, indeed, esteem a beard very unbecoming, and take great pains to get rid of it, nor is there any ever to be perceived on their faces, except when they grow old, and become inattentive ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Armagh, in the end of this year. The lower classes were chiefly attacked; the majority of those affected having been previously in bad health. The epidemic materially declined as the poor were better fed. The fever was frequently preceded by scurvy. Individuals at the age of puberty were chiefly attacked,—females more generally than males. In Newry, dysentery existed as an epidemic during the autumn of 1846, being very fatal among the old and infirm, who, if not carried off, were so debilitated by its effects, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... betrothed within a few days after their birth; and from the moment they are betrothed the parents cease to have any control over the future settlement of their child. Should the first husband die before the girl has attained the years of puberty she ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... producing substances which pass directly into the circulation; these substances act by control of the activities of other parts, stimulating or depressing or altering their function. Two of these glands, the thymus, lying in front, where the neck joins the body and which attains its greatest size at puberty, and the pituitary body, placed beneath the brain but forming no part of it, have been shown by recent investigations to have a very definite relation to growth, especially the growth of the skeleton. ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... of fat which is healthy for the individual varies with the sex, the climate, the habits, the season, the time of life, the race, and the breed. Quetelet[3] has shown that before puberty the weight of the male is for equal ages above that of the female, but that towards puberty the proportional weight of the female, due chiefly to gain in fat, increases, so that at twelve the two sexes are alike in this respect. During the child-bearing time ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... will be produced as long as a woman lives has already sprung into existence by the time she is born, not a single one ripens for from twelve to fifteen years. The ripening process begins about the time of puberty, and, unless suspended through the occurrence of pregnancy, continues until the menopause. During this period, which is also characterized by the periodical appearance of menstruation, one ovum ripens each month; sometimes, though rarely, several ripen at once, and this ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... are baffled when we talk about the beginning of anything in nature or in our own lives! In our experience there must be a first, but when did manhood begin; when did puberty, when did old age, begin? When did each stage of our mental growth begin? When or where did the English language begin, or the French, or the German? Was there a first English word spoken? From the first animal sound, if we can conceive of such, up to the human speech of to-day, there is an infinite ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... had attained about the age of puberty. His stature, however, was rather tall for his age, but exquisitely moulded and proportioned. Very fair, his somewhat round cheeks were tinted with a rich but delicate glow, like the rose of twilight, ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli

... as by the peasants who read nothing at all. "In Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old moon and the first appearance of a new one, it is said that it will never live to reach the age of puberty. Hence the saying, 'no moon, no man.' In the same county, too, when a boy is born in the wane of the moon, it is believed that the next birth will be a girl, and vice versa; and it is also commonly said that when a birth takes ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... exercise in the open air, etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticizing the religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... its way to the uterus through the little fallopian tube and is apparently lost in the debris of cells and mucus which, with the accompanying hemorrhage go to make up the menstrual flow. This continues from puberty to menopause, each gland alternatingly ripening its ovum, only to lose it in the periodical phenomenon of menstruation, which is seldom interrupted save by that still more ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... of puberty in boy or girl; this, like all emissions of semen, voluntary or involuntary, requires the Ghuzl or total ablution before prayers can be said, etc. See vol. v. 199, in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... feels bound to get his daughter or sister, as the case may be, married before she attains puberty. Rich people find little difficulty in securing suitable matches for their girls; but Babu Jadunath Basu, widely known as "Jadu Babu," was not blessed with a large share of this world's goods; and his sister Basumati was close on her teens. The marriage-broker had certainly ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... at this juncture, in making a tremendous effort. He wished to secure me finally, exhaustively, before the age of puberty could dawn, before my soul was fettered with the love of carnal things. He thought that if I could now be identified with the 'saints', and could stand on exactly their footing, a habit of conformity would be secured. I should meet the paganizing tendencies of advancing years with security if ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... fifteen to twenty-five years, when he is growing from boyhood to mature adult life, is called the period of adolescence. The period of adolescence is ushered in by a series of physical and psychical changes which make a well defined initial period called puberty. The period of puberty is about two years in length, and in the average case among American boys, covers the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth years, and is completed when the youth can produce fertile semen capable of fertilizing the human ovum. It is now ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... will give you Calmet's remarks; "A father could not sell his daughter as a slave, according to the Rabbins, until she was at the age of puberty, and unless he were reduced to the utmost indigence. Besides when a master bought an Israelitish girl, it was always with the presumption that he would take her to wife. Hence Moses adds, 'if she please not her master, and he does not think fit to marry her, he shall set ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:—all these and innumerable other causes contribute their mite to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... or both, or about a group of parents, in which the children live together and are sheltered and nurtured for their earlier years. Here, however, the real relationship of the child is to the tribe, the family is but his temporary guardian, and, at least by the age of puberty, he will be initiated into the tribal secrets. If he is a boy, he will cease to be a member of the family group and will go to live in the "men's house," becoming a part of the larger life of the tribe.[8] Such ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... observed in favour of bathing, that some fish are believed to continue to a great age, and continually to enlarge in size, as they advance in life; and that long after their state of puberty. I have seen perch full of spawn, which were less than two inches long; and it is known, that they will grow to six or eight times that size; it is said, that the whales, which have been caught of late years, are much less in size than those, which were ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... fragile and the long bones slender, with no marked impression for muscular attachment. A curious fact is that the ends of all the long bones are absent, presumably from decay, and as these ends are united to the shafts between the age of puberty (14-15) and adult life it is suggestive that the individual may have been of about the age of 18 or 20 and this is somewhat confirmed by the ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall

... does not make him of her clan; she belongs to his, till his death or divorce separates her from him. As for the children, the minors at the termination of the marriage belong to the mother's clan, but those who have had the puberty feast are counted to ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... love-business among themselves it is a very different matter, so far as I can understand it. The fairy child is initiated at the age of puberty and is then competent to pair. He is not long in selecting his companion; nor does she often seem to refuse him, though mating is done by liking in all cases and has nothing whatever to do with the parents. It must be remembered, of course, that they are ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... after a full meal (satietatem), or even habitual excess, by which the joints are weakened and deprived of their natural heat and subtile moisture. Hence boys and eunuchs are not commonly affected by gout—at least boys under the age of puberty. Women, too, do not usually suffer from this disease, because in coitus they are passive, unless their menstrual discharge is suspended. Again gout sometimes arises from infection of the primary semen; for a chronic disease may be inherited by the offspring and affect ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... they think proper to provide wives. the compensation given in such cases usually consists of horses or mules which the father receives at the time of contract and converts to his own uce. the girl remains with her parents untill she is conceived to have obtained the age of puberty which with them is considered to be about the age of 13 or 14 years. the female at this age is surrendered to her sovereign lord and husband agreeably to contract, and with her is frequently restored by the father quite as much as he received in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... be exiled: free, through vice, expert in vice, whose favors came through a throw of the dice, who hired himself out as a girl to those who knew him to be a boy! And as to the other, what about him? In place of the manly toga, he donned the woman's stola when he reached the age of puberty: he resolved, even from his mother's womb, never to become a man; in the slave's prison he took the woman's part in the sexual act, he changed the instrument of his lechery when he double-crossed me, abandoned the ties of a long-standing ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... sailors who expose the glans. Almost all the known Australian tribes circumcise after some fashion: Bennett supposes the rite to have been borrowed from the Malays, while Gason enumerates the "Kurrawellie wonkauna among the five mutilations of puberty. Leichhardt found circumcision about the Gulf of Carpentaria and in the river-valleys of the Robinson and Macarthur: others observed it on the Southern Coast a nd among the savages of Perth, where it is noticed by Salvado. James Dawson tells us "Circumciduntur pueri," etc., ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... their mothers' backs or laid sprawling upon the ground for the first two years [26]: they are circumcised at the age of seven or eight, provided with a small spear, and allowed to run about naked till the age of puberty. They learn by conversation, not books, eat as much as they can beg, borrow and steal, and grow up healthy, strong, and well proportioned ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... she reached the age of puberty, as she was handsome, her mother sent her into the theatrical troupe, and she straightway became a simple harlot, as old-fashioned people called it; for she was neither a musician nor a dancer, but merely prostituted ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... woman in a pregnant or menstrual condition. Among all primitive nations, including the ancient Hebrews, we find an elaborate code of rules in regard to the conduct and treatment of women on arriving at the age of puberty, during pregnancy and the menstrual periods, and at childbirth. Among the Cherokees the presence of a woman under any of these conditions, or even the presence of any one who has come from a house where such a woman ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... the relations are formed by character; after the highest and not after the lowest; the house in which character marries and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.... To each occurs soon after puberty, some event, or society or way of living, which becomes the crisis of life and the chief fact in their history. In women it is love and marriage (which is more reasonable), and yet it is pitiful to date and measure all the facts and sequel of an unfolding life from such a youthful and generally ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... That this form of disease occurs in both sexes; that it may exist before puberty, and at all ages between that and 40 or 50, at which time it seems to occur most frequently; but that no case occurs beyond the age of sixty. Hence that it is probably not a disease of ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... the girls are taught to spin cotton, and to beat corn, and are instructed in other domestic duties; and the boys are employed in the labours of the field. Both sexes, whether Bushreens or Kafirs, on attaining the age of puberty, are circumcised. This painful operation is not considered by the Kafirs so much in the light of a religious ceremony, as a matter of convenience and utility. They have, indeed, a superstitious notion that it contributes to render the marriage ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... by a multitude of symptoms which cannot be distinguished from syphilis, viz., characteristic ulcers and eczematous eruptions, swellings of the axillary and other lymphatic glands, atrophy of the mammary glands in the breasts of women and of girls above the age of puberty, etc. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... boy remains at school for a year or two at least under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, that he was "of age," and in the eye of the law a man, capable of looking after his own education and of holding property. This was a survival from the time when at the age of puberty the boy, as among all primitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens and warriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this. After a sacrifice in the house, and the dedication of his boyish ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... among the Filipinos." In regard to circumcision he states that it "is a very ancient custom among the Philippine indios, and so generalized that at least seventy or eighty per cent of males in the Tagal country have undergone the operation." Those uncircumcised at the age of puberty are taunted by their fellows, and such are called "suput," a word formerly meaning "constricted" or "tight," but now being extended to mean "one who cannot easily gain entrance in sexual intercourse." The "operation has no religious significance," nor is it ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... period when childhood passes from immaturity of the sexual functions to maturity. Woman attains this state a year or two sooner than man. In the hotter climates the period of puberty is from twelve to fifteen years of age, while in cold climates, such as Russia, the United States, and Canada, puberty is frequently ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... this kind occurred in the case of a young man, the son of an opulent family. He had arrived at puberty, but from the early age of ten had been accustomed to indulge in indecent familiarities with young girls, who had gratified him by lascivious manipulations; the consequence was an entire loss of the erectile power. Travelling being recommended, he proceeded to France, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport



Words linked to "Puberty" :   adolescence, time of life, pubertal



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com