Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use archaic in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective

Archaic means the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, etc.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.). Example: “The archaic past participle shapen is only used in misshapen, ill-shapen, and well-shapen (the latter two are much less common, though).”

Examples of archaic by meaning

adjectiveNo longer in ordinary use, though still used occasionally to give a sense of antiquity and still likely to be...

  • Almost every writer of power will occasionally use with strong effect an archaic term that he has unearthed from the treasures of the older English vocabulary.1900, Mary Hall Leonard, “The Revival of Old English Words”, in The Writer, volume 13, page 23
  • When generations pass and the object or institution referred to by the archaic word is no longer part of present, lived experience, though the word has been retained, its meaning is commonly altered or simply vanishes.1982, Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: the technologizing of the word, page 46
  • An inflated speech in archaic language might end with a modern pinprick: "And so on, and so on!"2008, Susan F. Beegel, “Introduction”, in John Steinbeck, Cup of gold: a life of Sir Henry Morgan, buccaneer, page xx

More sentences with archaic

  • The archaic past participle shapen is only used in misshapen, ill-shapen, and well-shapen (the latter two are much less common, though).From the entry latter
  • (archaic) a travel bag containing clothing, nightwear and other accessories.From the entry packet
  • He was equally cognizant of the "ludic" (playful) component in the rituals of archaic societies.2019, Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites. From the entry ergonic
  • The insistence that the Anastenaria was so archaic—that its worldview preceded the Hellenic gods—actually “internationalized” the custom.2015, Roumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov, Entangled Histories of the Balkans, →ISBN. From the entry Anastenaria
  • I'm talking about archaic Personal Digital "Assistant" devices that were popular around the turn of the century.2013 April 21, dsi1, “Topics I Avoid”, in rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic (Usenet), archived from the original on 01 Jul 2026. From the entry the cat's pajamies
  • We arrive at a place which has a signage with archaic lettering.2012, J. L. Dobias, Cripple Mode: Hot Electric, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 612. From the entry signage
  • Polemology locates popular culture in a long (even archaic and nonhuman) tradition of warfare.2012, Jack Z. Bratich, “Sovereign Networks, Pre-emptive Transgression, Communications Warfare: Case Studies in Social Movement Media”, in…. From the entry polemology
  • The supposedly uniconic cult of the public hearth was (and was regarded by the Romans) as archaic.2010, Nathan Rosenstein, Robert Morstein-Marx, editors, A Companion to the Roman Republic, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 231. From the entry uniconic
  • An archaic term, really, but I like it. crone: A menopausal or post-menopausal Wiccan.2006, Ashleen O'Gaea, Family Wicca: practical paganism for parents and children, page 213. From the entry cronehood
  • Elsewhere we find descriptions of the most archaic Irish poetry, the passages of obscure poetry called rosc.1997, Maria Tymoczko, The Irish Ulysses, →ISBN, page 307. From the entry rosc
  • The countryside, in short, was becoming more archaic and more autarkic.1996, Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, Folio Society, published 2015, page 687. From the entry autarkic
  • He provokes, inspires, pontificates and jargonizes unto "hegemony" and "archaic parental imagos."1982 Jan. 14, John Leonard, "Books of the Times" (book review of The Age of Desire by Joel Kovel), New York Times (retrieved 29 Nov 2012). From the entry jargonize
  • They stood half way in the evolutionary process by which archaic rumor mongering developed into popular journalism.1976, Robert Darnton with Bernhard Fabian and Roy McKeen Wiles, edited by Paul J. Korshin, The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation…. From the entry chronique scandaleuse
  • Crotoniate history in the archaic period was one of ups and downs.1962, A[rthur] G[eoffrey] Woodhead, “Croton”, in The Greeks in the West (Ancient Peoples and Places; 28), New York, N.Y.: Frederick A[mos]…. From the entry Crotoniate
  • It is said that in the archaic age only these ‘aristocrats’ possessed full citizenship-rights, allowing them to rule their cities.2015, Alain Duplouy, “Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in archaic and classical Greece: two gentilician strategies”, in Nick Fisher…. From the entry gentilician
  • These findings are contrary to the opinion that sciuroids are relatively archaic forms, based on their cuspidate dentition.2013, W. Patrick Luckett, Jean-Louis Hartenberger, Evolutionary Relationships among Rodents, page 347. From the entry sciuroid
  • O how Spring’s archaic language sounds its horn.2008, Ronald Wallace, “Sex Talk”, in For a Limited Time Only (Pitt Poetry Series), Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, →ISBN…. From the entry crocussy
  • The amphikinetic type appears to be the most archaic; isolated examples survive only in Hittite and the Indo-Iranian languages.2006, Don Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European To Proto-Germanic, Oxford University Press, page 45. From the entry amphikinetic
  • Above the word is part of "Central," rendered in a dated balloony script, underlining the archaic nature of Gross's subject.2004 July 2, Fred Camper, “The City, Brick by Brick”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry balloony
  • Historical novelists usually create a language for their characters that suggests the period without reproducing it in its archaic fullness.1999, Michael Petracca, The Graceful Lie: A Method for Making Fiction, Prentice Hall, →ISBN. From the entry historical novelist
  • Plato could still speak the language of archaic myth.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London…. From the entry Pythagorean
  • Really, it’s hard not to wonder whether some current civil forfeiture practices represent much less than a revival of the archaic common-law deodand.2024 May 9, Neil Gorsuch, “CULLEY ET AL. v. MARSHALL, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ALABAMA, ET AL.”, in Opinions, Supreme Court of the United States. From the entry deodand
  • Somehow, though, I learned to overlook the archaic, to be open to the oddnesses of different eras, and to read for something else.2020 June 25, Tegan Bennett Daylight, “My mother taught me the joy of reading. I remember her through books”, in Katharine Viner, editor…. From the entry sticky
  • The language is clearly an archaic version of modern Tashelhiyt, and, while sometimes unusual from a southwestern Moroccan perspective, holds little surprises to the Berberologist.2013, Maarten Kossmann, The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber, page 48. From the entry Berberologist
  • Parrot cries for silence on delicate political issues sounded increasingly archaic – and were quite unable to stem the rising tide of parlementary critique.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 265. From the entry parrot cry
  • The wedge-shaped character was the triangle, the archaic Paleolithic sign of the vulva; the pubic triangle was at the end of the phallic stylus.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London…. From the entry triangle
  • The real ‘historical’ plural of dwarf (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows, anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic.[1937 October 15, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, “To Stanley Unwin, Chairman of Allen & Unwin”, in Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher…. From the entry dwarrow
  • Having undertaken to modernize Chaucer, he avoids the affectation of archaic words; he has no "eftsoonery." Some of his phrases are very modern indeed.1933 October 21, Robert Kilburn Root, “Chaucer Modernized”, in Henry Seidel Canby, editor, The Saturday Review of Literature, volume X…. From the entry eftsoonery
  • It is unclear whether it is identical to piθθiɣórru with an apocopated final syllable, or whether it is an archaic manifestation that has not been influenced by kórru, kórra.2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 208. From the entry apocopated
  • First, students from a migrant background may experience difficulties in using the archaic vocabulary and terminology of German law which was developed during the nineteenth century.2020 July 31, Jan Thiessen, “Multicultural Law and Multicultural Legal Classes: A Legal-Historical Account from Germany”, in Csaba Varga…. From the entry state examination
  • Over two million years a species of archaic human we know as Homo erectus emerged and left its African homeland in one or more waves to search farther afield.2016, James T. Carson, “Who Was First and When?: The Diasporic Implications of Indigeneity”, in Amitava Chowdhury, Donald Harman Akenson…. From the entry Europasia
  • It is a widely accepted idea that archaic Greek elites consisted of ‘aristocrats’ who ruled by hereditary right and enjoyed a life of leisure thanks to their riches.2015, Alain Duplouy, “Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in archaic and classical Greece: two gentilician strategies”, in Nick Fisher…. From the entry gentilician
  • The aim of deconfusion is the transformation of unconscious processes such as archaic, domrant and conflicted aspects of self, into a more conscious, vibrant and mature dynamic.2012, Michele Novellino, The Transactional Analyst in Action: Clinical Seminars, →ISBN, page 144. From the entry deconfusion
  • The corvée is an archaic feature, absent from later statutes, but the notion that 50 akçes was the rate of compensation due for loss of tithes lingered.2011, Christine Woodhead, editor, The Ottoman World. From the entry akçe
  • The serpents of Paradise and of Moses took him back to the dawn of man, to the prophets, to Yahweh, a world that seemed brutal and archaic to him.2002, Jonathan F. Krell, transl., Eleazar, Exodus to the West, Lincoln, Neb.; London: University of Nebraska Press, translation of Éléazar…. From the entry paleotestamentary
  • In such pathological relatedness, the child's archaic security needs (which are developmentally immature and of a grandiose and idealizing nature) either go unmet or are mismet.1994, John Fiscalini, “Narcissism and coparticipant inquiry: Explorations in contemporary interpersonal psychoanalysis”, in Contemporary…. From the entry mismeet
  • He did not come to discuss the alleged transgressions of outmoded and archaic laws, because, he said, he already had all that from police and court records.1984 February 4, “Time On Boylove”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 28, page 4. From the entry bl

Meaning of archaic

  1. noun The prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, etc.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).
  2. noun (A member of) an archaic variety of Homo sapiens.
  3. adjective Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.

Full definition of archaic

Questions about archaic in a sentence

How do you use archaic in a sentence?
Archaic is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “The archaic past participle shapen is only used in misshapen, ill-shapen, and well-shapen (the latter two are much less common, though).”
What is a short sentence with archaic?
“O how Spring’s archaic language sounds its horn.”
What does archaic mean?
Archaic means the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, etc.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: archaic (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use archaic in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/archaic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.