archaic
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: anthropology
archaeology
biology
history
human-sciences
lexicography
linguistics
natural-sciences
paleoanthropology
paleontology
sciences
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, “to be first”), from ἄρχω (árkhō, “to begin”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ergʰ- (“to begin, rule, command”).
Inflected forms:
form: archaics
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: archaïc
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
form: archaick
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: archaeic
pos: noun
tags: alternative
hypercorrect
obsolete
form: archæic
pos: noun
tags: alternative
hypercorrect
obsolete
form: more archaic
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most archaic
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: archaïc
pos: adj
tags: alternative
archaic
form: archaick
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: archaeic
pos: adj
tags: alternative
hypercorrect
obsolete
form: archæic
pos: adj
tags: alternative
hypercorrect
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: The prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, etc.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).
pos: noun
tags: US
capitalized
usually
examples: … Archaic Stage … the stage of migratory hunting and gathering cultures continuing into environmental conditions approximately those of the present.
gloss: (A member of) an archaic variety of Homo sapiens.
pos: noun
examples: [...] prefer the third explanation for the advanced-looking features of Neandertals (Chapter 7) and the Ngandong hominins (Chapter 6), but they have had little to say about the post-Erectine archaics from China.
gloss: Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.
pos: adj
examples: 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.
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.
Brann's compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic. Volume 1
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.
gloss: No longer in ordinary use, though still used occasionally to give a sense of antiquity and still likely to be understood by well-educated speakers and are found in historical texts.
pos: adj
examples: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
gloss: Belonging to the archaic period.
pos: adj
Synonyms: dated
obsolete
old fashioned
Related words: archaeologist
archeologist
archaeology
archeology
archeobacteria
culture
horizon
stage
paleoethnobotany
paleo
Paleo-indian
Paleolithic
Derived words: archaical
archaically
archaicism
archaicity
archaicize
archaicness
archaic smile
archaicy
archaism
archaist
hyperarchaic
nonarchaic
pseudo-archaic
superarchaic
unarchaic
Translations: