antiquity
noun
Simple meaning
Ancient times; faraway history.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
antihkwuhteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ænˈtɪkwəti
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Ancient times; faraway history; former ages.
The people of ancient times.
often constructed as an uncountable plural
A relic or monument of ancient times, such as a coin, a statue, etc.; an ancient institution.
The state of being ancient or of ancient lineage.
history
The historic period preceding the Middle Ages in Europe
The period of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Ancient times; faraway history; former ages.
Used this way, antiquity is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in historical writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use antiquity
- “Cicero was an eloquent orator of antiquity.”noun
- “That such pillars were raised by Seth all antiquity has avowed. —Sir W. Raleigh.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- renaissancenoun
- medievaladjective
- prehistoricadjective
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.