--- title: Adulting Definition: Millennials Favorite New Word description: And why it makes so much sense that this slang is hot stuff among millennials canonical: https://time.com/4361866/adulting-definition-meaning/ author: Katy Steinmetz article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-08T20:33:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:18.037Z og:title: Here Is What 'Adulting' Means og:description: And why you're seeing it everywhere og:url: https://time.com/4361866/adulting-definition-meaning/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58f103ef55fcde58/69889701cd1bba267070106b/adulting.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Man ironing in a laundromat og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here Is What 'Adulting' Means twitter:description: And why you're seeing it everywhere twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58f103ef55fcde58/69889701cd1bba267070106b/adulting.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is What 'Adulting' Means > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Twice a week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Watch a Millennial Figure Out How to Pay His Taxes [Watch (HLS stream): Watch a Millennial Figure Out How to Pay His Taxes](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FXUmCLyv.m3u8) (3:30)  _Published 2015-03-19. MONEY's Jake Davidson takes the plunge and attempts to prepare his own taxes for the first time. How hard could it be?_ by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Jun 8, 2016 8:33 PM UTC  Glow Images, Inc/Getty Images by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Jun 8, 2016 8:33 PM UTC English speakers love to turn nouns into verbs. There was rain before it rained. There was Google before we googled. And there were adults before we adulted. The latter has exploded onto the Internet in the past year. In fact, the American Dialect Society—the organization that basically [invented](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjpo4LmlpnNAhWCVyYKHZamDzIQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F3589626%2Fword-of-the-year-history%2F&usg=AFQjCNF0t0jipJ7WyAoMVhvqfR2-WenrOA&sig2=BOOa%5FbNqSmsmHZLxQncN1w&bvm=bv.124088155,d.eWE) choosing a “word of the year”—[nominated](http://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-year-is-singular-they)the verb _adult_ as last year’s most creative construction in their most recent vote a few months ago. And in the most recent issue, the linguistics journal [_American Speech_ ](http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/91/1/81)has offered up these definitions: 1\. to behave in an adult manner; engage in activities associated with adulthood 2\. to make someone behave like an adult; turn someone into an adult The linguists who wrote the piece also noted that this noun that has been turned into a verb has been turned back into a noun, in the form of an activity known as adulting—which operates in a sentence much like its cousin “parenting” does. They also traced the currently hot usage (Defintion #1) back as far as a tweet from 2008. But while a definition is a satisfying thing to have sorted out, it doesn’t tell the whole story. For instance, it doesn’t explain the context in which one might want to use the word or why searches for the term have done this.  According to Jane Solomon, a lexicographer at Dictionary.com and one of the article’s authors, a big factor is millennials and their “delayed development” (which isn’t necessarily as unfortunate as it sounds). “This generation of millennials,” she says, “they go through life stages that other generations have gone through much later in life, like starting families, owning homes. Maybe they won’t own homes at all.” The age of first-time mothers is indeed at a [historic high](http://time.com/4181151/first-time-moms-average-age/) of 26\. Real-estate site [Zillow](http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2015-08-17-Todays-First-Time-Homebuyers-Older-More-Often-Single) found that first-time home-buyers are more likely to be older and single today than in past decades. We’ve all heard about millennials’ [boomeranging](http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/23/the-surprising-benefits-of-boomerang-kids/). And so this jokey way of [describing one’s engagement in adult behaviors](http://time.com/money/4287524/new-college-grads-money-financial-guide/)—whether that is doing your own taxes, buying your first lawn mower, staying in on a Friday, being someone’s boss or getting super pumped about home appliances—can help those millennials acknowledge _and/or_ make fun of _and/or_ come to grips with that transition (or how late they are to it). This is, after all, a transition their friends may not be going through yet or one that might seem to herald that certain end to their fading youth. To say you are “adulting” is to, on some level, create distance between you and what are implied to be _actual_ adults who are adulting 100% of the time and therefore have little reason to acknowledge it. Or if they do, they might instead use phrases like “going about my normal day.” Depending on the person and their listeners, different motivations may be driving the “adulting” utterance. It may be the speaker’s insecurity at so rarely finding themselves in an adult posture well into their 30s. Or it may be their wish to imply that they’re still so young and hip that it is laughable for them to be, say, ironing the serviettes before a dinner party. Or it may be their fear that their peers will find the fact that they spent a lot of time making a Thanksgiving centerpiece kind of lame, so they use the term to make fun of themselves when they Instagram it. #adulting Or perhaps the speaker is the only one in the friend group who is 25 and has a house and spouse and kid and uses the term to spare the feelings of fellow diners who, they happen to know, wish they could also be in that position, a sort of implied “No, no, you’re the normal one. I’m the one acting much older than my age,” even though they’re doing those things even later than their own parents did. Or maybe it’s some completely different context because English words have a fantastic habit of defying being pinned-down. While some find the phrase cute and cuddly, others do not. Jezebel writer Madeleine Davies [believes](http://jezebel.com/youre-not-adulting-youre-acting-your-fucking-age-1746878718) there is a “self-congratulatory” vein to this, an expectation of millennials to be applauded for “fulfilling your basic responsibilities as a human,” which she finds to be “pretty much the most childish thing imaginable.” And at least one person, Kelly Williams Brown, appears to be making a living off the term. She turned her popular blog on adulting into a [book](http://www.amazon.com/Adulting-Become-Grown-up-Easy-Steps/dp/1455516902?tag=jezebelamzn-20&ascsubtag=a06ed06c0ddce52b0b831a0b10ccd8d7912c620a&rawdata=%5Br%7Chttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F%5Bt%7Clink%5Bp%7C1746878718%5Ba%7C1455516902%5Bau%7C5718841880548224858%5Bb%7Cjezebel) that sympathetically (and comically) offers to help millennial-types cope with things like “Accepting non-Special-Snowflake-ness.” Also in the sympathetic camp is linguist and author Ben Zimmer, another mind behind the _American Speech_ article. _Adulting_ tends to be used by those “who find themselves doing adult things for the first time and feeling like an adult,” he says. “It is very much attached to people coming of age, where they’re thrust into having to take things more seriously.” Every generation, he adds, “comes to grip with aging in their own way.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Hello. My name is Jacob Davidson. I'm a reporter with Money. com, and believe it or not I have never done my own taxes. I've had taxes filed for me in the past but I think it's time that I become a real adult and do it myself. So we're gonna see how it goes. I've obviously heard doing your taxes is extremely difficult, but I assume that since I'm just a normal individual, unmarried, that can't possibly be that hard. Ok, so I'm on the IRS website right now. I'm excited to file my tax returns, as you can see by all these smiling people. And so we're just gonna go to file your tax return. Go to free file. Start now, and then you'll see there's like a lot of options here, and depending on your income bracket, you can get different tax software for free. So, we've already chosen one that didn't look to shady, Jackson Huett, so we're just gonna, we're gonna go ahead and do it. So I've hit my first screen of questions here, and they're all pretty depressing. So I am not blind, disabled, or deceased yet. Wow, easy interview versus choosing income myself. So yeah, I got no tips, no one tipped me even once. Oh wow, it's like figuring all this out for me? Is this like, supposed to be obvious? Enter your codes by clicking [ LAUGH ] Look at all these things. I don't know what these are. So yeah, initially I didn't think this to be that hard. I still don't think it's that hard, but I think what I didn't expect was how vague the questions would be. I mean, ultimately, on one hand, it's just filling boxes, but on the other hand. There are some terms that, that seems to mean certain things, but might mean others and I'm not really sure. And this isn't the kinda thing I wanna get wrong, so I'm gonna go ask my friend for some help. [ MUSIC ] So, I had some problems, so I brought in my friend Kara, who knows a thing or two about taxes. So Kara, I have a question here. If I put in $ 10, 000 here, then that ends up showing $ 10, 000 in social security wages. So, how is that true because I didn't get any Social Security as a wage. Look, all you have to do is put, in, is what is exactly on your W- 2. They try to make this as fool proof as possible. All you have to do is copy the information that you have into here. You shouldn't have to make any decisions on.. On your own. Right. It's just copy, paste. Jake, did you donate more than $ 6, 200 to charity? I did not. Okay. So then it's not gonna be worth it to itemize your charitable expenses because you'll just get more back. With a standard deduction. Okay. All right, so I thought it was gonna be easy. I think it turned out to be a little bit harder than I though. Kara's right. Ultimately if you just enter in what's in the boxes on your form, it's not super difficult, but sometimes depending on the software you're using, it's not clear that certain things are in boxes or it's not clear a certain language means certain things. So yeah, I think this is definitely more of a, more of a hassle than I expected. But I did think it was sort of interesting to go through and just look at all the weird different things you can get tax credits for. 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