I. WORDS EXPRESSING ABSTRACT RELATIONS

VI. TIME

2. RELATIVE TIME; Time with reference to succession

Oldness.

[Antonyms: newness.]

[Nouns] oldness; age, antiquity; cobwebs of antiquity.

maturity; decline, decay; senility [more].

seniority, eldership, primogeniture.

archaism (the past) [more]; thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium; Sanskrit.

tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law.

[Verbs] be old; have had its day, have seen its day; become old; age, fade, senesce.

[Adjectives] old, ancient, antique; of long standing, time-honored, venerable; elder, eldest; firstborn.

prime; primitive, primeval, primigenous; paleoanthropic, paleolithic, primordial, primordinate; aboriginal (beginning) [more]; diluvian, antediluvian; protohistoric; prehistoric; antebellum, colonial, precolumbian; patriarchal, preadamite; paleocrystic; fossil, paleozoic, preglacial, antemundane; archaic, classic, medieval, Pre-Raphaelite, ancestral, black-letter.

immemorial, traditional, prescriptive, customary, whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary; inveterate, rooted.

antiquated, of other times, rococo, of the old school, after-age, obsolete; out of date, out of fashion, out of it; stale, old-fashioned, behind the age; old-world; exploded; gone out, gone by; passe, run out; senile [more]; timeworn; crumbling (deteriorated) [more]; secondhand.

old as the hills, old as Methuselah, old as Adam, old as history.

[Adverbs] since the world was made, since the year one, since the days of Methuselah.

[Phrases] vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi [Tacitus. "We exalt the old while neglecting the new" (Latin)].