Archaic

How to spell archaic

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce archaic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does archaic mean?

1. adjectiveBelonging to or characteristic of a much earlier period; old-fashioned and no longer in current use.

Archaic in a sentence

• The contract was written in archaic legal language that few clients could follow.

• Many of the office's archaic filing methods were replaced by a single database.

Where does archaic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek arkhaikos, meaning 'old-fashioned' or 'antiquated', which was formed from arkhaios, 'ancient' or 'primitive'. That adjective in turn grew out of arkhe, a noun meaning 'beginning' or 'origin', the same root that gives us 'archaeology' and the prefix 'arch-' in words like archetype. The Greeks used arkhaios for anything dating from the earliest times, and the sense of 'belonging to a much earlier age' carried straight through. English picked the word up in the early nineteenth century, partly by way of the French archaique, to describe styles, words, and customs that survive from the distant past. The spelling trap lives in that Greek 'ch', which is pronounced like a hard 'k' rather than a soft 'ch', so the 'cha' looks like it should sound like 'church' but does not.

How the word is built

• archa- (from Greek arkhaios: ancient, from arkhe: beginning)
• -ic (adjective suffix)