old as the hills
UK/ˌəʊld əz‿ðə ˈhɪlz/US/ˌoʊld əz‿ðə ˈhɪlz/
old as the hills adjective: extremely old.
Adjective
old as the hills (not comparable)
- Extremely old.
- His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable.1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, “In Fashion”, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, pages 6–7
- “[…]And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all dust and ashes.”
“But all that’s as old as the hills, my boy!”
“It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow everything becomes of no consequence.[…]”1901 [1878], chapter 7, in Constance Garnett, transl., Anna Karenina, translation of Анна Каренина (Anna Karenina) by Leo Tolstoy, part 4
- Synonyms:
- aged, age-old, ancient, old as the Pyramids, old as time, older than dirt, older than the Pyramids, antediluvian, auld, cobwebbed
Synonyms of old as the hills
Forms of old as the hills
| alternative form | older than the hills |
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Origin of old as the hills
Possibly a reference to Job 15:7 in the Bible (King James Version; spelling modernized): “Art thou the first man that was born? Or wast thou made before the hills?”
Words that rhyme with old as the hills
8 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about old as the hills
- What does old as the hills mean?
- Old as the hills means extremely old.
- What part of speech is old as the hills?
- Old as the hills is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce old as the hills?
- Old as the hills is pronounced /ˌəʊld əz‿ðə ˈhɪlz/ (UK).
Words near old as the hills in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: old as the hills (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-old as the hills.ogg.
Cite this entry: “old as the hills.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/old_as_the_hills. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.