Word.ws English Dictionary

quondam

/ˈkwɒndəm/

quondam adjective: former; once; at one time.

Adjective

quondam (not comparable)

  1. (formal) Former; once; at one time.
    • This is the quondam King; Let's ſeize vpon him.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
    • Present him if you please in my name to [John] Henry, [William] Grayson and all our quondam acquaintances and be assured that any civilities he receives from you will be gratefully remembered by me.1789, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to James Madison, 28 March, in The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections 1788–1790, vol. 1, ed. Merrill Jensen and Robert A. Becker, University of...

quondam meaning in Tamil and Urdu

quondam in Tamil

முந்தைய, முன்னாளுக்குரிய, பழைய

quondam in Urdu

سابق

Examples of quondam in a sentence

  • However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...
  • For the sleeper on the couch was not Akeley at all, but my quondam guide Noyes.1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 8, in The Whisperer in Darkness:
  • A few hundred pages after faintly praising me […] the book’s narrator (a quondam critic with nothing nice to say about Charlie Kaufman) challenges me to a barroom argument about cinema.2020 September 1, A. O. Scott, “‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Review: Where to Begin?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

Synonyms of quondam

8 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of quondam

Origin of quondam

Borrowed from Latin quondam. Compare whilom.

Words formed from quondam

Questions about quondam

What does quondam mean?
Quondam means former; once; at one time.
What is quondam in Tamil?
Quondam in Tamil is முந்தைய, முன்னாளுக்குரிய, பழைய. See Quondam meaning in Tamil.
How do you use quondam in a sentence?
However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame.
What part of speech is quondam?
Quondam is an adjective.
How do you pronounce quondam?
Quondam is pronounced /ˈkwɒndəm/.

Words near quondam in the dictionary

  1. quominus
  2. quomodo
  3. quomodocunquizing
  4. quomodos
  5. Quon
  6. quondam
  7. quondamly
  8. quondamship
  9. quondong
  10. quondongs
  11. quoniam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quondam (page history and authors); quondam (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quondam (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-quondam.wav.

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