Meaning of once a man, twice a child | Babel Free

Definitions

A man is born as a child, grows to adulthood, and consequently enters old age, when he deteriorates and reverts to a childlike state.

Equivalents

Examples

“King David being in his childhood, an old man in his ſecond childhood, for all old men are tvvice children, as the proverb is, An old man tvvice a child‡; it happened vvith him, as it doth oftentimes, vvhen vvicked men of a King's childhood take occaſion of evil. / Footnote ‡: Once a Man, tvvice a Child.”

“In verification of the old saying, "Once a man, twice a child," Mr. Hood tells of "A School for Adults,"—and gives a picture of aged men, baldheaded and wigged, whose education had been neglected, studying their A, B, C.”

“Again, it is a saying, ‘once a man twice a child,’ but, of cases without number, it may justly be said, once a man always a man; tens of thousands there are whom this second childhood toucheth not, whose inward vigour evidently increaseth as their outward strength decays, […]”

“The time will come, dear children, when the mother becomes as a little child. Once a man, twice a child. This must happen to us all if we live to a great age. Bear then, dear ones, with a mother's infirmities, weaknesses, aye, even petulances; you may come to this yourselves.”

““I am an old man,” he said; “I avail myself of the privilege of an old man,—to be a child. ‘Once a man, twice a child.’[…]””

“dora: Look at all these games. Once a man, twice a child, my mother used to say. / ansell: What did she mean by that? / dora: She meant that a man grows from a boy, to a man, to a boy again.”

“Give them an inch, they take a yard / Give them a yard, they take a mile / Once a man and twice a child / And everything is just for a while”

“The child in people sometimes comes out after one reaches a certain stage in life, which makes the saying, "Once a man twice a child" to be the truth.”

CEFR level