Sir - I write to you in the remote, probably hopeless, prospect of introducing some reality into the use, or rather misuse of the term "middle-aged".
This term is continually employed by people and media alike without any regard to its meaning.
"Middle" is by any logical definition the half-point of anything. Since the life expectancy of men is 72 and women 78, this would leave a "middle-aged" interpretation of 36 and 39 respectively. Recent suggestions that this may be slightly increasing are statistically unsupported and at any rate minimal.
Yet persons in their mid-fifties are continually referred to as "middle-aged", thus pre-supposing a life expectancy of 110 or thereabouts.
It is my experience that an extremely small proportion of the population actually achieve three figures, so could people everywhere please cease this vain self-delusion. The half point, like it or not, exists and when it is passed, one thereafter qualifies as elderly. - Yours, etc.,
Sean Webster, Rathmines, Dublin 6.