Hoary vs Archaic - What's the difference?
hoary | archaic |
White or gray with age.
* 1787 , ,
(zoology) Of a pale silvery gray.
(botany) Covered with short, dense, grayish white hairs; canescent.
(obsolete) Remote in time past.
(obsolete) Moldy; mossy; musty.
Old or old-fashioned.
* {{quote-news
, year=2012
, date=June 3
, author=Nathan Rabin
, title=TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)
(archaeology, US, usually capitalized) A general term for the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘
* 1958 , Wiley, Gordon R., and Philip Phillips, Method and Theory in American Archaeology , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, page #107:
(paleoanthropology) (A member of) an archaic variety of Homo sapiens .
* 2009 , The Human Lineage , page 432:
Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.
* 1848 , , The Biglow Papers :
* 1887 , , Historia Numorum A Manual Of Greek Numismatics :
* 1898 , , The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast :
(of words) No longer in ordinary use, though still used occasionally to give a sense of antiquity.
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Belonging to the archaic period
As adjectives the difference between hoary and archaic
is that hoary is white or gray with age while archaic is of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.As a noun archaic is
a general term for the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, &c.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).hoary
English
Adjective
(er)- The old man bowed his hoary head in acquiescence.
"How Firm a Foundation":
- And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
- Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.
citation, page= , passage=In its God-like prime, The Simpsons attacked well-worn satirical fodder from unexpected angles, finding fresh laughs in the hoariest of subjects.}}
Derived terms
* hoarily * hoarinessarchaic
English
Noun
(en noun)Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American?paleolithic’, &c .) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).
- [...] 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.
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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
