Word.ws English Dictionary

awncient

awncient is the obsolete form of ancient.

Meaning of ancient

Adjective

ancient (comparative ancienter or more ancient, superlative ancientest or most ancient or ancientmost)

  1. Having lasted from a remote period; having been of long duration; of great age, very old.
    • an ancient city
    Synonyms:
    aged
  2. Existent or occurring in time long past, usually in remote ages; belonging to or associated with antiquity; old, as opposed to modern.
    • an ancient author
  3. Relating to antiquity as a primarily European historical period; the time before the Middle Ages.
  4. (obsolete) Experienced; versed.
    • approved by the consent of the moste ancient doctors of the Churche [part of the book title]1550, Thomas Cranmer, A Defence of the True and Catholick Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ; with a Confutation of sundry Errors concerning the same, grounded and...
  5. (obsolete) Former; sometime.
    • They mourned their ancient leader lost.1715–1720, Homer, “Book II”, in Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC

See all 11 meanings of ancient

Forms of awncient

comparativemore awncient
superlativemost awncient

Questions about awncient

What is awncient the obsolete form of?
Awncient is the obsolete form of ancient.

Words near awncient in the dictionary

  1. awm
  2. awmries
  3. awmry
  4. awms
  5. awn
  6. awncient
  7. awned
  8. awnedness
  9. awner
  10. awners
  11. Awngi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: awncient (page history and authors); ancient (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “awncient.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/awncient. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.