past one's prime

past one's prime

English

Prepositional phrase

past one's prime

1. No longer in an ideal condition.
   • 1890, William Booth, “The Submerged Tenth”, in In Darkest England and the Way Out‎, page 19:

     "Perhaps it might be nearer realisation," growls the cynic, "if we could only produce men according to demand, as we do horses, and promptly send them to the slaughter-house when past their prime"—which, of course, is not to be thought of.

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter CXIV, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, OCLC 890513588:

     […] he saw the pretty face grow thin and white, the hair grow scanty, the pretty hands, worn down brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animal—then, when the man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages he had to take; […]

   • 2023 February 20, Vanessa Friedman, quoting Don Lemon, “Don Lemon, Nikki Haley and the Lessons of a Hoodie”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:

     On Wednesday, Don Lemon, a co-host of “CNN This Morning,” is scheduled to return to the show, five days after apologizing on Twitter and internally for describing Nikki Haley on air last Thursday as “past her prime.”

Further reading

• “past one's prime”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary