archaic
/ɑɹˈkeɪ.ɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.36 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
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.).
American usage
noun
(A member of) an archaic variety of Homo sapiens.
adj
Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.
adj
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.
Example Sentences
- "… Archaic Stage … the stage of migratory hunting and gathering cultures continuing into environmental conditions approximately those of the present."
- "[...] 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."
- "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."
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”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₂ergʰ-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɑɹˈkeɪ.ɪk/
- British English: /ɑːˈkeɪ.ɪk/
Usage
- American usage
Inflected Forms
archaics (plural)
archaïc (alternative, archaic)
archaick (alternative, obsolete)
archaeic (alternative, hypercorrect)
archæic (alternative, hypercorrect)
more archaic (comparative)
most archaic (superlative)