antique

Etymology

Borrowed from French antique (“ancient, old”), from Latin antiquus (“former, earlier, ancient, old”), from ante (“before”); see ante-. Doublet of antic.

adj

1. Having existed in ancient times, descended from antiquity; used especially in reference to Greece and Rome.
   […] Phillip the younger issue of the king, / Coting the other hill in such arraie, / That all his guilded vpright pikes do seeme, / Streight trees of gold, the pendant leaues, / And their deuice of Antique heraldry, / Quartred in collours seeming sundy fruits, / Makes it the Orchard of the Hesperides, […] 1596, The Raigne of King Edvvard the third:[…], London: Cuthbert Burby, unnumbered page
   Not that great Champion of the antique world, / Whom famous Poets verse so much doth daunt, / And hath for twelue huge labours high extold, / So many furies and sharp fits did haunt, / […] 1609, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene, Disposed Into XII. Bookes, Fashioning twelue Morall Vertues, London: Mathew Lownes, book 1, canto 11, verse 27, page 51
   From the rest they stand out contrastingly, as the Apollo of the later Greek sculpture-school,—too graceful for divinity and too vivacious for marble,—placed in a company of the antiquer statues with their grand blind look of the almightiness of repose. (Originally printed in 1842 in the Athenæum.) 1842, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets, New York: James Miller, published 1863, page 179
   Believe an impartial Howadji who has no Cangie or other boats to let at Mahratta, that Nubia is a very different land from Egypt, and that you have not penetrated antiquest Egypt, until you have been awe-stricken by the silence which was buried ages ago in Aboo Simbel, and by the hand-folded Osiride figures, that people, like dumb and dead Gods, that dim, demonic hall. 1851, George William Curtis, Nile Notes of a Howadji, New York: Harper & Brothers, page 159
2. Belonging to former times, not modern, out of date, old-fashioned.
   Some traditions of this antiquer system may have passed into Van Eyck's method, from distemper into oil, and thence downwards, gradually more vague, into the modern process, till they at length disappeared altogether about Rubens's time. 1841-07-03, “Fine Arts”, in The Athenæum: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, number 714, London, page 509, column 3
   A lonesome traveler might have been seen, / On the turnpike road near the village green, / In a grotesque suit of ultra-marine / And a hat broad-brimmed and conical, / Awkwardly perched in a family cart— / The very antiquest kind / Of an umbrella arching o'er him, / A long black trunk behind / And a short white pony before him, / That ambles on with a jerk and a start, / As though it were taking an active part / In a piece of German machinery. 1865, H. T. Sperry, Country Love vs. City Flirtation; or, Ten Chapters From the Story of a Life, New York: Carleton, page 10
   There the cause of death was soon ascertained ; the victim of this daring outrage had been stabbed to death from ear to ear with a long, sharp instrument, in shape like an antique stiletto, which […] was subsequently found under the cushions of the hansom. […] 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 1, in The Tremarn Case
3. (typography) Designating a style of type.
4. (bookbinding) Embossed without gilt.
5. Synonym of old (“of color: subdued, as if faded over time”)
6. (obsolete) Synonym of antic, specifically:
   1. Fantastic, odd, wild, antic.

noun

1. In general, anything very old; specifically:
   1. An old object perceived as having value because of its aesthetic or historical significance.
   2. An object of ancient times.
   3. (in the singular) The style or manner of ancient times, used especially of Greek and Roman art.
   4. (figurative, mildly derogatory) An old person.
   5. (obsolete) A man of ancient times.
      They supposed that they had seene those most beutyfull Dryades, or the natyue nymphes or fayres of the fountaynes whereof the antiques spake so muche. 1577, Richarde Eden, Richarde Willes, The History of Trauayle in the VVest and East Indies, and other countreys lying eyther way, towardes the fruitfull and ryche Moluccaes:[…], London: Richarde Iugge, folio 31
      Wee eas'ly limme, some louely-Virgin face, / And can to life, a Lantscip represent, / Afford to Antiques, each his proper grace, / Or trick out this, or that compartement : / […] [1612], Henry Peacham, Minerva Britanna or a Garden of Heroical Deuises, furnished, and adorned with Emblemes and Impres'as of sundry natures, London, page 114
2. (typography) A style of type of thick and bold face in which all lines are of equal or nearly equal thickness.
3. (obsolete) Synonym of antic">antic, specifically:
   1. Grotesque entertainment; an antic">antic.
      […] I do implore secretie, that the King would haue me present the Princesse (sweete chuck) with some delightfull ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique, or fierworke : […] c. 1595–1596 (date written), W. Shakespere [i.e., William Shakespeare], A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues Labors Lost.[…] (First Quarto), London: […] W[illiam] W[hite] for Cut[h]bert Burby, published 1598, →OCLC; republished as Shakspere’s Loves Labours Lost (Shakspere-Quarto Facsimiles; no. 5), London: W[illiam] Griggs,[…], [1880], →OCLC, [https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000000994949?urlappend=%3Bseq=55 [Act V, scene i]]
   2. A performer in an antic; or in general, a burlesque performer, a buffoon.

verb

1. (intransitive) To search or shop for antiques.
   [Janis] went antiquing with us because she and our firstborn, Matthew, were in the market for some bedroom furniture. 1999, Ron McAdoo, Caryl McAdoo, Antiquing in North Texas, page 103
2. (transitive) To make (an object) appear to be an antique in some way.
3. (transitive, bookbinding) To emboss without gilding.