Word.ws English Dictionary

old guard

old guard noun: a conservative, reactionary faction that is more unwilling to accept new ideas than their peers are.

Noun (1)

old guard (plural old guards)

  1. A conservative, reactionary faction that is more unwilling to accept new ideas than their peers are.
  2. An established group of prestige and influence.
    • The Blues, without new big-money signings Fernando Torres and David Luiz, relied on their old guard to dig them out of an early hole.2011 February 1, Saj Chowdhury, “Sunderland 2 - 4 Chelsea”, in BBC
  3. (capitalized, historical) The imperial guard created in 1804 by Napoleon.

Noun (2) capitalized: Old Guard

Old Guard (plural Old Guards)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of old guard.

Antonyms of old guard

Forms of old guard

pluralold guards
pluralOld Guards

Origin of old guard

Calque of French vieille garde.

Words formed from old guard

Questions about old guard

What does old guard mean?
Old guard means a conservative, reactionary faction that is more unwilling to accept new ideas than their peers are.
What part of speech is old guard?
Old guard is a noun.
What is the plural of old guard?
The plural of old guard is old guards.

Words near old guard in the dictionary

  1. old gown
  2. Old Gray Lady
  3. Old Greek
  4. Old Greenwich
  5. Old Grevillia
  6. old guard
  7. old guardism
  8. old guardist
  9. old guardists
  10. old guards
  11. Old Guildford

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old guard (page history and authors); Old Guard (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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