an appellation given to any thing that is arrived at maturity: Thus we say, an adult person, an adult plant, &c. Among civilians, it denotes a youth between 14 and 25 years of age.

**ADULTERER**, a man who commits adultery. See **ADULTERY**.

**ADULTRESS**, a woman guilty of **ADULTERY**. An adulteress, by our law, undergoes no temporal punishment whatever, except the loss of her dower; and she does not lose even that, if her husband is weak enough to be reconciled to her, and cohabit with her after the offence committed. 13 Ed. I. cap. 34.

But it is to be observed, that adulteresses are such either by the canon or civil law. According to the former, a woman is an adulteress who, either being herself married, converses carnally with another man; or being single herself, converses with a man that is married. According to the latter, she is not an adulteress, if she be not herself in the married state, though she converses with a man that is. The crime, in this case, was more properly called *florrum* than *adulterium*. Hence, among the Romans, the word *adultera*, "adulterers," differed from *pellex*, which denoted a single woman who cohabited with a married man; and *pellex* differed from *concubina*, which signified her who had only intercourse with an unmarried man. The former was reputed infamous, and the latter innocent.