archaic
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɑːˈkeɪ.ɪk/
ipa: /ɑɹˈkeɪ.ɪk/
ipa: /ɐːˈkæɪ.ɪk/
note: Indic
ipa: /ɑ(r).ke.jɪk/
Forms: form: more archaic
form: most archaic
form: archaeic
form: archæic
form: archaïc
form: archaick
Etymology: From archaism (“ancient or obsolete phrase or expression”) or from French archaïque, ultimately from Ancient Greek ἀρχαϊκός (arkhaïkós, “old-fashioned”), from ἀρχαῖος (arkhaîos, “from the beginning, antiquated, ancient, old”), from ἀρχή (arkhḗ, “beginning, origin”), from ἄρχω (árkhō, “I am first”), from ἄρχω (árkhō, “I begin”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ergʰ- (“to begin, rule, command”).
Senses: examples: text: A person familiar with the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now noted in English vocabularies as archaic, the greater part of which were in common use about the time of the King James translation of the Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a glossary to most New Englanders than to many a native of the Old Country.
ref: 1848, James Russel Lowell, The Biglow Papers:
text: There is in the best archaic coin work [of the Greeks] ... a strength and a delicacy which are often wanting in the fully developed art of a later age.
ref: 1887, Barclay V. Head, Historia Numorum A Manual Of Greek Numismatics:
text: Brann's compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic. Volume 1
ref: 1898, William Cowper Brann, The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast:
text: But now he is reinvented; he is on the way to establishing himself as the official interpreter of an ancient, archaic institution to the generations that are already distant in both time and culture from the world that sustains his grandmother.
ref: 2017 December 27, “The Guardian view on Prince Harry: the monarchy’s best insurance policy”, in the Guardian:
glosses: Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.
examples: text: The language of the Faerie Queene was made archaic Language:— in order to be in keeping with the chivalry of bygone ages that formed its subject.
ref: 1893, Harrington Hugh Melville Percival, “Introduction”, in The faerie queene: Book 1, page lxi:
text: Almost every writer of power will occasionally use with strong effect an archaic term that he has unearthed from the treasures of the older English vocabulary. This is especially true of poets, who recognize that the unusualness of the archaic word will sometimes heighten the poetic effect.
ref: 1900, Mary Hall Leonard, “The Revival of Old English Words”, in The Writer, volume 13, page 23:
text: When generations pass and the object or institution referred to by the archaic word is no longer part of present, lived experience, though the word has been retained, its meaning is commonly altered or simply vanishes. African talking drums, as used for example among the Lokele in eastern Zaire, speak in elaborate formulas that preserve certain archaic words which the drummers can vocalize but whose meaning they no longer know.
ref: 1982, Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: the technologizing of the word, page 46:
text: his resistance to censorship blends nicely with his scorn for the common folk, so a limited edition, in beautiful archaic language incomprehensible to the masses, of rude or blasphemous material such as one can find in the Decameron, would simultaneously satisfy both impulses.
ref: 2005, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, “Editor's Introduction”, in Decameron, page lxvi:
text: Cabell also uses a kind of stylistic dissonance to reinforce his novel's thematic ironies at the sentence level. An inflated speech in archaic language might end with a modern pinprick: "And so on, and so on!"
ref: 2008, Susan F. Beegel, “Introduction”, in John Steinbeck, Cup of gold: a life of Sir Henry Morgan, buccaneer, page xx:
topics: human-sciences
lexicography
linguistics
sciences
glosses: No longer in ordinary use, though still used occasionally to give a sense of antiquity and are still likely to be understood by well-educated speakers and are found in historical texts.
raw_tags: of words
topics: archaeology
history
human-sciences
sciences
glosses: Belonging to the archaic period.
Synonyms: word: dated
word: obsolete
word: old fashioned
Derived terms: archaical
archaically
archaicism
archaicity
archaicize
archaicness
archaic smile
archaicy
archaism
archaist
hyperarchaic
nonarchaic
pseudoarchaic
superarchaic
unarchaic
Related terms: word: archaeologist
word: archeologist
word: archaeology
word: archeology
word: archeobacteria
topics: anthropology
human-sciences
sciences
word: culture
topics: archeology
word: horizon
word: stage
english: paleobotany; archeobotany
translation: paleobotany; archeobotany
word: paleoethnobotany
word: paleo
word: Paleo-indian
word: Paleolithic