Word.ws English Dictionary

superannuated

Syllables: su·per·an·nu·at·ed/ˌsupɚˈænjuˌeɪtɪd/

superannuated adjective: obsolete, antiquated. Also the simple past and past participle of superannuate.

Adjective

superannuated (comparative more superannuated, superlative most superannuated)

  1. Obsolete, antiquated.
    • In Europe it’s too dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the verbosity, the long disquisitions on superannuated subjects.1886 [1882], Henry James, The Point of View, London: Macmillan and Co.
    • The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, is all that hitherto has stood in human record to attest what manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd.1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter XXV.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC
  2. Retired or discarded due to age.
    • I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father’s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it.1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 2
    • And yet I remember that it was that absurd, emaciated, superannuated cab-horse which held my gaze.1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

Also used as

superannuated is also the simple past and past participle of superannuate.

Examples of superannuated in a sentence

  • Your correspondent has a handful of superannuated computers lying around the home.2007 June 1, “Sledgehammers and hard drives”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 16 May 2025:
  • Files written fifteen or twenty years ago on superannuated computers and obsolete operating systems are for practical purposes irretrievable.2010, Bruce Rich, To Uphold the World: A Call for a New Global Ethic from Ancient India, Beacon Press, published 2010, →ISBN:
  • Klein, Monbiot and Bill McKibben all insist that we cannot avert the ecological disaster that confronts us without loosening the grip of that superannuated zombie ideology.2014 November 6, Rob Nixon, “Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’”, in New York Times:

Synonyms of superannuated

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of superannuated

Forms of superannuated

comparativemore superannuated
superlativemost superannuated

Origin of superannuated

From the Latin superannuatus (“more than one year old”), from super (“over”) (English super-) + annus (“year”) (English annual).

Words formed from superannuated

Questions about superannuated

What does superannuated mean?
Superannuated means obsolete, antiquated.
How do you use superannuated in a sentence?
Your correspondent has a handful of superannuated computers lying around the home.
What part of speech is superannuated?
Superannuated is an adjective.
How do you pronounce superannuated?
Superannuated is pronounced /ˌsupɚˈænjuˌeɪtɪd/.

Words near superannuated in the dictionary

  1. superanions
  2. superannuable
  3. superannuant
  4. superannuants
  5. superannuate
  6. superannuated
  7. superannuates
  8. superannuating
  9. superannuation
  10. superannuations
  11. superannuitant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: superannuated (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-us-superannuated.ogg, en-au-superannuated.ogg.

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