the.com/pensioner
Someone who spent forty years earning the right to nap at noon and complain freely.
means A person who receives a regular payment, typically a pension, after retiring from work — often someone living on retirement income in their later years.
from From the Latin pensio, 'a payment' or 'an instalment,' built on pendere, 'to weigh out' — because in the ancient world money was literally weighed before it was counted. That same root, swinging on its scales, gives us pension, pendant, and even ponder. By way of Old French pension it arrived in English, where a 'pensioner' originally meant anyone in receipt of a regular allowance — including dependents and hangers-on — long before it settled into its modern sense of one drawing a pension for years of labour done.
- word origin
- From Latin pensio, meaning a payment or rent
- first pensions
- Roman soldiers got land and pay after service
- oldest worker
- People over 100 still legally hold jobs
- voting power
- Older citizens vote at far higher rates
- early retirement
- Bismarck set pension age at 70 in 1889
uk state pension — 8.6 million uk retirees receive £221.20/week as of 2024
us social security — 67 million americans age 65+ receive average $1,907/month
german rentenversicherung — 21 million german retirees funded by mandatory pension contributions since 1889