"He died at 91 years old"

[TheParser]

"He died at 91 years old."

A professional writer penned that sentence. Of course, this humble soul is nobody to question a professional writer, but

I feel that the use of "old" is not grammatically justified.

I tried to Reed-Kellogg this sentence, but I could not find any place where "old" would fit.

Do you other Reed-Kellogg enthusiasts agree with me?


THANK YOU

 

[White Hat]

I typed

"died at * years old" site:uk

in my Google search-box, and the search-engine yielded 468 000 results. All these must be from UK websites.

 

[White Hat]

The following was written by a native speaker whose command of English is quite solid:

1763 Romney entered the Death of General Wolfe for a prize and won 25 guineas and sold the painting that year for a further 25 guineas. His fame began to spread.

He moved to a larger studio at Charing Cross and shortly after to Covent Garden where many artists lived.

His daughter Ann died at just 3 years old.

Biography of George Romney

 

[White Hat]

Maybe that's because the word "being" is implied here, as in "at being 91 years old"?

 

[konungursvia]

Tools are just simplified representations, and can't in my view substitute for real brains evaluating real utterances.

I think the sentence is far from beautiful, but it's natural enough to be considered normal by a native speaker of AmE.

To me, it's clear "91 years" represents a duration, a length of time, a span, whereas "91 years old" is a single point on that continuum. Using "at" to locate the deceased on that continuum is just fine.

"He fell at the 91 meter mark" is a sentence one might say of an unfortunate sprinter.
"They examined the high water point."

So I think the word "old" can be situated and explained just fine. :lol::lol: