college-age

The compound adjective "college-age" is a modern American English formation that directly combines two nouns to specify a demographic. The first element, "college," traces back to the Latin collegium, meaning a community or society, which evolved to denote an institution of higher learning. The second element, "age," originates from the Latin aetas, referring to a period or stage of life. The compound's logic is transparently descriptive, literally meaning "of the age for college," and emerged in the 20th century to categorize the late adolescent to young adult population associated with tertiary education.

Structure: college (institution) + age (period of life) college: From Latin collegium (community, society, guild), via Old French. In this compound, it functions as a noun modifier specifying the type of age. age: From Old French aage, eage, from Latin aetaticum (period of life), from aetas (age). In this compound, it functions as the head noun, denoting the life stage.