Word.ws English Dictionary

ye olde

UK/ðiː əʊld/US/ði oʊld/

ye olde phrase: pseudo-archaic form of the old, as to suggest antiquity or old tradition.

Phrase

ye olde

  1. Pseudo-archaic form of the old, as to suggest antiquity or old tradition.
    • I'm not wasting my time going to lectures given by ye olde professor Jones.
    • Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe

Adjective

ye olde (not comparable)

  1. Old-fashioned, antiquated, historic, especially in a contrived manner.
    • We lived in Crofton, Maryland, halfway between Annapolis and Washington, DC, at the western edge of Anne Arundel County, where the residential developments are all in the vinyl-sided Federalist style and have quaint ye-olde names like Crofton Towne, Crofton Mews, The Preserve, The Ridings.2019 September 17, Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, page 35

Examples of ye olde in a sentence

  • But I didn't see it and walked into ye olde tyme lounge hall, panelled in Elizabethan linen-fold oak made out of chewed paper painted olde shitte colour.1955, Joyce Cary, Not Honour More, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 98:
  • Judging from the panicked look and white pallor on Pinky's face, I'd just put him between ye olde rock and ye olde harde place.2012, Richard Marcinko, Seal Force Alpha, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN:
  • All day, #horses was a trending topic on social media, as if this was ye olde days.2024 April 27, Michael Hogan, “Did five frightened horses bolting through London really mean the end was neigh?”, in The Observer, →ISSN...

Forms of ye olde

alternative formye-olde

Origin of ye olde

Pseudo-loan from Middle English, derived from the + old. First attested in 1850.

Questions about ye olde

What does ye olde mean?
Ye olde means pseudo-archaic form of the old, as to suggest antiquity or old tradition.
How do you use ye olde in a sentence?
But I didn't see it and walked into ye olde tyme lounge hall, panelled in Elizabethan linen-fold oak made out of chewed paper painted olde shitte colour.
What part of speech is ye olde?
Ye olde can be a phrase or an adjective.
How do you pronounce ye olde?
Ye olde is pronounced /ðiː əʊld/ (UK).

Words near ye olde in the dictionary

  1. YDT
  2. ye
  3. ye gods
  4. ye gods and little fishes
  5. ye of little faith
  6. ye olde
  7. ye wei
  8. ye'd
  9. ye'elimite
  10. Ye'kuana
  11. Ye'kwana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ye olde (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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