Talking about Age in the Media

Everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants to be old. –Harry Moody, director of academic affairs for AARP (2012).

To me – old age is always ten years older than I am. –Bernard Baruch, American financier (1870-1965).

About forty-two million Americans are 65 years or older. Advertisers, politicians, and researchers often need to refer to this group, but finding a term that will not insult its members is not easy.

Various terms have been suggested with varying degrees of success. Elder, elderly, senior, and retiree are the most common.

In Canada, according to what I’ve read in forums, the term elder has connotations of venerable age and wisdom; in the United States, however, people tend to associate elder with disapproving church elders or the word elderly. The decline of the acceptability of the word elder is illustrated by the name change of a travel organization established in 1975 for active Americans 60 and older. The parent organization is still calledElderhostel, but in advertising, the program is now known agelessly as “Road Scholar.”

Even the word retiree is heavy with the connotations of age. These days, the American Association of Retired People (founded 1958) goes by its initials only: AARP.

When politicians talk about “our seniors” in the same breath as “our children,” mature adults understandably bristle.

An article in The Senior Times says that the term “senior citizen” was coined in 1938 during a political campaign. Its use soars on the Ngram Viewer beginning in the 1940s. According to National Public Radio reporter Ina Jaffe, “senior citizen” is a term that “seems to annoy just about everyone.”

Recognizing the minefield of age and terms relating to it, The AP Stylebook has this entry for the word elderly:

Use this word carefully and sparingly. Do not refer to a person as elderly unless it is clearly relevant to the story. It is appropriate in generic phrases that do not refer to specific individuals: concern for the elderly, a home for the elderly, etc.

If the intent is to show that an individual’s faculties have deteriorated, cite a graphic example and give attribution for it. Use age when available and appropriate.

Apply the same principle to terms such as senior citizen.

Age is one of the realities of life that our culture prefers to deny. It’s unlikely that any term can be found to refer to old people that would not be offensive to someone because in our culture, old age itself is seen as offensive.

Perhaps the safest course is to refer to the intended age group in numeric terms:
between the ages of 65 and 75
above the age of 65
septuagenarian
octogenarian
nonagenarian
centenarian

Colloquial synonyms for “old person” range from friendly to deliberately hurtful, for example:
old-timer
oldster
codger
dotard
crone
coot

Although the word codger (like coot) usually has a negative connotation, this review about Dick Van Dyke in the Chicago Tribune (1992) makes a kind of compliment of it:

The wonderfully funny Dick Van Dyke, insufficiently honored in his prime, has now passed into the lovable-old-codger stage.

His comic gifts are sharper than ever, and he still dances with grace, style and a naughty insouciance. He is much too good for the quirky-old-coot roles that are his lot nowadays.