eld
/ɛld/
eld noun: one's age, age in years, period of life.
Noun
eld (uncountable)
- One's age, age in years, period of life.
- A forlyued cok leiþ eiren in his laste elde... and ȝif any venemous worme sittiþ on broode þerevppon in þe canyculer dayes, þerof is igendrid... a cocatrice.a. 1398, John Trevisa, transl. Bartholomeus Anglicus as De Proprietatibus Rerum (MS BL Add. 27944), Vol. I, p. 628
- The experience of many years gave old men peculiar qualification for various offices; and elders, or men of a ripe or advanced eld or age, were variously employed under the Mosaic law.1868, John Eadie, A Biblical Cyclopædia
- Old age, senility; an old person.
- Dotard, (ſaide he) let be thy deepe aduiſe;
Seemes that through many yeares thy wits thee faile,
And that weake eld hath left thee nothing wiſe,
Els neuer ſhould thy iudgement be ſo frayle,
To meaſure manhood by the ſword or mayle.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 223 - Taught he not thee—the man of eld, / Whose eyes within his eyes beheld / Heaven's numerous hierarchy span / The mystic gulf from God to man?1847, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Threnody”, in Poems, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 245
- Synonyms:
- elderliness, age, chair days, codgerhood, fogeydom, geezerdom, golden years, old age, oldhood, senescence
- Dotard, (ſaide he) let be thy deepe aduiſe;
- Time; an age, an indefinitely long period of time.
- Synonyms:
- aeon, age, ages, blue moon, coon's age, crow's age, dog's age, donkey's years, eon, eternity
- Former ages, antiquity, olden times.
- The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries ...1833, Edgar Allan Poe, MS. Found in a Bottle
- Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with her lover.1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 38
- Synonyms:
- days of yore, foreday, foretide, foretime, old days, past, yestertide, yestertime, yesteryear, yore
Adjective
eld (comparative elder, superlative eldest)
- Old.
Verb
eld (third-person singular simple present elds, present participle elding, simple past and past participle elded)
Examples of eld in a sentence
- Promptly appeared a paragon, aged twenty-five or thereabouts, and exhibiting all the steadiness and serenity of advanced eld.1913, Paulist Fathers, Catholic World:
- There were the middle-aged men, the old men, who did not bow down to her; but from middle-age, as from eld, she had a sanguine aversion.1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika Dobson:
- The withered limbs of eld, the thin, gray hair […]1912, Herbert Van Allen Ferguson, Rhymes of Eld:
- the alien wife / No crown of honour was as eld drew on.1912, Arthur S[anders], transl. Way, Medea, Heinemann, translation of Medea by Euripides, published 1946, page 329:
Synonyms of eld
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of eld
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | elth |
| alternative Scotland | eild |
| alternative Scotland | eeld |
| alternative Scotland | ild |
| alternative Scotland | yeeld |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | elder |
| superlative | eldest |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | elds |
| present participle | elding |
| past participle | elded |
| past | elded |
Origin of eld
From Middle English elde, from Old English ieldu, eldo, ieldo (“age, period of time; period; time of life, years; mature or old age, eld; an age of the world, era, epoch”), from Proto-West Germanic *aldī, from Proto-Germanic *alþį̄ (“eld, age”), from *aldaz (“grown up, mature, old”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eltós, from *h₂el- (“to raise, feed”). Cognate with Scots eild (“age”), North Frisian jelde (“age”), German Älte (“age”), Danish ælde (“eld, age”), Icelandic elli (“eld, age”). Related also to Gothic 𐌰𐌻𐌳𐍃 (alds, “generation, age”), Old English alan (“to grow up, nourish”). More at old.
Words that rhyme with eld
Questions about eld
- What does eld mean?
- Eld means one's age, age in years, period of life.
- How do you use eld in a sentence?
- Promptly appeared a paragon, aged twenty-five or thereabouts, and exhibiting all the steadiness and serenity of advanced eld.
- What part of speech is eld?
- Eld can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
- How do you pronounce eld?
- Eld is pronounced /ɛld/.
Words near eld in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: eld (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-eld.wav.
Cite this entry: “eld.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eld. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.