Ageing as a field of research

The ninth entry is l’invecchiamento a casa propria, and English has a ready-made phrase for it that no dictionary hands over word by word. The Italian spells the arrangement out: growing old at one’s own home. English says « ageing in place », three words used alike by housing charities, architects and government papers, and the whole weight of them sits on the last one. That « place » is not a location. It is the older sense kept alive in « stay in place », « hold something in place » and « a hair out of place »: the position a thing already occupies, together with the idea that nothing has moved it. So « ageing in place » does not say where somebody grows old — it says that nobody was moved. Read it that way and the opposing term in the same field explains itself, and it is the thirtieth entry here, the move into a care home. Two cautions. The Italian phrase carries no such opposition and describes anybody living at home. And « aging », without the e, belongs to writing from the United States; British spelling keeps « ageing ».