0 the condition of being very old; used especially to talk about someone who has a long healthy life:
Whatever her chance was of surviving to a ripe old age before the experiment, that chance is lower now.
More people live to a ripe old age nowadays, but at that period of life all sorts of illnesses, not necessarily fatal illnesses, may occur.
I welcome the fact that my parents have been able to live to a ripe old age.
What is happening is not so much that people are living longer but that more people are living to a ripe old age.
The number of us who will reach a ripe old age is growing significantly year by year.
We all want to reach a ripe old age, but not to be lonely and at the margins of society.
From now on they will live to a ripe old age.
It seems absurd to condemn as unfit for human habitation a cottage in which successive generations have lived to a ripe old age.
