ADOLESCENCE, the state of growing youth; or that period of a person's age commencing from his infancy, and terminating at his full stature or manhood. The word is formed of the Latin adolescere, to grow.—The state of adolescence lasts so long as the fibres continue to grow, either in magnitude or firmness. The fibres being arrived at the degree of firmness and tension sufficient to sustain the parts, no longer yield and give way to the efforts of the nutritious matter to extend them; so that their farther accretion.
cretion is stopped, from the very law of their nutrition.
ADOLLAM, or ODOLLAM, (anc. geogr.) a town in the tribe of Judah, to the east of Eleutheropolis. David is said to have hid himself in a cave near this town, (Bible.)