There are so many reasons to expand your vocabulary—especially as a writer! Between finding just the right word to for that perfect sentence and avoiding overuse, learning new words offers you an entire new arsenal of tools to choose from. How about starting with five words related to ancient.
Ancient itself means belonging to the distant past. It can get a lot of use, from describing a building to being used to describe a person or tool.
Fusty: to be old fashioned in style or attitude. This applies to everything from grammar lessons to yes, that dress your great-grandmother is still so in love with. Just because it’s fusty doesn’t make it unusable, it’s just old-fashioned.
Anile: of or resembling an old woman. Specifically, anile is meant to indicate doddering or feebleness. That means you can use it to describe your Great Uncle Melvin, or his rants about how things were so much harder in his day.
Spavined: something old and decrepit, and might also indicate swelling. This is a word that’s often used in the context of horses. While a spavined lawn mower won’t be swollen, your old stallion’s joints likely are.
Dotard: someone who’s age has caused their mind to weaken. It can certainly be used as an insult. After all, who’s going to want to listen to the dotard with his outdated ideas about love and marriage?
Noachian: something that has passed its time of usefulness. If you want to apply this to a specific time period however, take a look at Mars: the Noachian period on Mars was approximately 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago. Talk about ancient!
What are some of your favorite words for ancient? Let me know in the comments below!
The Written Vixen 