Word.ws English Dictionary

for old times' sake

for old times' sake prepositional phrase: an appeal to the nostalgia of prior experiences to convince someone to do something.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) An appeal to the nostalgia of prior experiences to convince someone to do something.
    • When gang leader Chen Xinfu was apprehended in Haikou, capital of south China’s island province of Hainan, earlier this month he told his arresting officers: “Guys, take good care of me, for old times’ sake.”
      Unlike the hundreds of other mob bosses who have been rounded up in recent months, Chen...2019 April 14, Guo Rui, “China’s war on organised crime, corrupt officials sees 79,000 people detained”, in South China Morning Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 Apr 2019, Politics

Synonyms of for old times' sake

Forms of for old times' sake

alternative formfor old time's sake

Origin of for old times' sake

See old time.

Questions about for old times' sake

What does for old times' sake mean?
For old times' sake means an appeal to the nostalgia of prior experiences to convince someone to do something.
What part of speech is for old times' sake?
For old times' sake is a prepositional phrase.

Words near for old times' sake in the dictionary

  1. for no good reason
  2. for nothing
  3. for now
  4. for old sake's sake
  5. for old time's sake
  6. for old times' sake
  7. for old times' sakes
  8. for once
  9. for once and for all
  10. for one
  11. for one reason or another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: for old times' sake (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-for old times' sake.ogg.

Cite this entry: “for old times' sake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/for_old_times%27_sake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.