Adjective

(en-adj)

Having lasted from a remote period; having been of long duration; of great age; very old.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=Foreword citation , passage=‘I understand that the district was considered a sort of sanctuary,’ the Chief was saying. ‘An Alsatia like the ancient one behind the Strand, or the Saffron Hill before the First World War. […]’}}

Existent or occurring in time long past, usually in remote ages; belonging to or associated with antiquity; old, as opposed to modern.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black), title=Internal Combustion

, chapter=2 citation , passage=Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.}}

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=(Henry Petroski)

, title= Geothermal Energy , volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.}}

(label) Relating to antiquity as a primarily European historical period; the time before the Middle Ages.

(obsolete) Experienced; versed.

* Berners

Though [he] was the youngest brother, yet he was the most ancient in the business of the realm.

(obsolete) Former; sometime.

* Alexander Pope

They mourned their ancient leader lost.

Adjective

(-)

(rare, chiefly, literary) Having existed for centuries; ancient.Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed. (1989)

* 1907 , (author), Mother , Public domain translation (translator unknown), ch. 9:

To-morrow we'll deliver the matter to you—and the wheels that grind the centuried darkness to destruction will again start a-rolling.

* 1912 , , "March Evening" in A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass :

Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers

Creaking, to turn, in its centuried rust.

* 1953 , , "Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices," The Kenyon Review , vol. 15, no. 1 (Winter), p. 101:

Muck, murk, and humus, and the human anguish

And human hope, and that dark wood-mold sweeter

Than any dropped through centuried silence . . .

* 1987 , Calvin Bedient, "On Milan Kundera," Salmagundi , no. 73 (Winter), p. 94:

Here he finds "concrete existence," for instance "hated irony" and dialogue and jokes and "the centuried roots of jazz."