Antiquated

How to spell antiquated

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce antiquated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antiquated mean?

1. adjectiveOld-fashioned and no longer suited to modern needs; outdated.

Antiquated in a sentence

• The office still runs on antiquated software that crashes every afternoon.

• Their antiquated filing system relied on paper cards stored in metal drawers.

Where does antiquated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin antiquatus, the past participle of antiquare, meaning 'to make old' or 'to reject as out of date'. That verb was built on antiquus, which literally meant 'former' or 'ancient', itself derived from ante, 'before'. English adopted the form in the early 1500s, at first as a verb meaning to render something obsolete, and the participle antiquated soon settled into use as an adjective for whatever had been left behind by changing times. The same antiquus root gives us the more familiar 'antique', which is why both words carry that tell-tale 'qu' in the middle. Knowing the buried Latin ante ('before') explains the spelling: it is anti-QU-ated, not anti-K-ated, even though it sounds like a hard k.

How the word is built

• anti- (variant of antiquus: ancient, former)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (adjective/past-participle suffix)