Antiquity

How to spell antiquity

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce antiquity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antiquity mean?

1. nounThe distant historical past, especially the era of ancient civilisations before the Middle Ages.
2. nounThe quality or state of being extremely old.

Antiquity in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traces trade routes that existed in deep antiquity.

• The manuscript is valued for its antiquity as much as its content.

• Scholars of classical antiquity study Greek and Roman texts in their original languages.

• The sheer antiquity of the oak surprised the surveyors who dated its rings.

Where does antiquity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin antiquitas, meaning 'the old times' or 'great age', which was built on the adjective antiquus, 'old, ancient, former'. That adjective in turn grew from the Latin ante, simply meaning 'before', so at its core antiquity carries the idea of things that came before us. It travelled into English in the 1300s by way of Old French antiquite, at first describing the ancient world and later widening to mean both great age in general and the relics left behind by old civilisations. The same ante root survives in everyday words such as 'antique' and even 'antecedent', which helps explain why the 'anti-' opening here means 'before' rather than 'against'. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the Latin qu was kept intact, so the word is spelled -quity, and the final syllable is an unstressed -ity rather than the -ety that some writers expect.

How the word is built

• antiqu- (from Latin antiquus: old, former, from ante 'before')
• -ity (noun suffix forming a quality or state)