Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Gray or white with or as if with age.
- adj. Covered with grayish hair or pubescence: hoary leaves.
- adj. So old as to inspire veneration; ancient.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- White or whitish.
- White or gray with age: as, hoary hairs.
- Figuratively, remote in time past: as, hoary antiquity.
- 4. Musty; moldy: as, hoary bread.
- In botany and entomology, covered with short, dense, grayish-white hairs; canescent.
Wiktionary
- adj. white or gray with age
- adj. of a pale silvery gray.
- adj. covered with short, dense, grayish white hairs; canescent
- adj. remote in time past
- adj. moldy; mossy; musty
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. White or whitish.
- adj. White or gray with age; hoar.
- adj. remote in time past.
- adj. Moldy; mossy; musty.
- adj. Of a pale silvery gray.
- adj. Covered with short, dense, grayish white hairs; canescent.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. ancient.
- adj. covered with fine whitish hairs or down
- adj. showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair
Examples
“If the inheritors of the future someday find quaint the idea that feminism once advanced the goals for women of reproductive rights, health care access, and cultural and legal equality of opportunity, and the F-word's future definition instead represents aspirational female success within hoary notions of gendered expectations and opportunities ... well, that would be unfortunate.”
The Huffington Post: AJ Rossmiller: Brilliant New Book About Gender and 2008 Election
“Since 9/11, Pipes has become notorious for trafficking in hoary old Orientalist stereotypes in order to stoke Americans’ prejudice against, and fear of, Islam.”
Wonk Room » Why Is Specter Speaking At Pipes-Sponsored Conference?
“People are bowing in the presence of what they suppose to be the antiquity, that is, the hoary-headed wisdom, of the world.”
“It hushes the infant to its slumbers in the cradle with a song whose theme is the babe of Bethlehem; it allures the child to virtue by the example of Josiah, Timothy, and Samuel; it warns the wayward youth, and reproves the erring man, and calls the hoary sinner to repentance.”
“Finally, Mr. ARTHUR HATHERTON, as _Lob_, the host of the party, a kind of hoary old _Puck_ who had a _penchant_ for filling his house every”
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, October 24, 1917
“The leaves of the willow are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear "hoary" in the reflection in the brook.”
Lectures on the English Poets Delivered at the Surrey Institution
“The "hoary" (to borrow a word) chestnut that it takes a big man to apologize was floated.”
“British novelist John Galsworthy knew the value of preserving the past -- and he would likely have counted "hoary" among those old things worth saving.”
“That "hoary" ancestor evolved into "hoar," a synonym of "ancient" that has been part of our language since before the 12th century.”
“And at the risk of further alienating respected colleagues and groups, do the hoary lessons of democratic transition and consolidation--particularly in the Southern Cone--which we all read and absorbed as undergraduate and graduate students still apply?”
The Huffington Post: Christopher Sabatini: As Latin America Changes Will the U.S. Policy Debate?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hoary’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 414 more...
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Deadwood Dick
venison, vim, sanguine, gulch, maudlin, hirsute, pare, cavalcade, twain, repast, cognomen, florid and 3 more...
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Thats a word?!
Unusual jumbles of letters that are actually words
asci, lin, avast, presumptuousness, drumble, repudiate, anile, feal, dawt, haver, apery, hoary and 10 more...
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tatterdemalion's list
chrysalis, colloquy, peroration, syncretism, dickering, gamelan, dictatress, adventurism, untenable, presumption of fa..., lovelorn, bawdily and 47 more...
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Character traits
Falstaffian, drumble, despond, grotesque, élan, anile, feal, smart aleck, phat, blowsy, haver, hoary and 18 more...
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nicolelindseyj's list
tragematopolist, sockdolager, arachibutyrophobia, hoary, knismogenic, nudiustertian
silas
"The drunkest of Hrothgar's thanes come reeling and clanking down from their wall-hung beds, all shouting their meady, outrageous boasts, their heavy swords aswirl like eagles' wings. 'Woe, woe, woe!" cries Hrothgar, hoary with winters, peeking in, wide-eyed from his bedroom in back."
~ Grendel/John Gardner/1971 ~ Sep 17, 2009
bilby "Five years ago, when American forces quickly dismantled Iraqi society, liberal as well as conservative pundits announced that it was up to our forces to restore 'stability' -- as if the Iraqis themselves had wrought the chaos from which we were to rescue them. Though the American military did most of the destabilizing in Iraq, this historical fact was set aside in favor of the hoary myth that America is invariably a force for good, uniquely dedicated and qualified to bring order out of chaos around the world."
- 'General Entrap-Us or General Entrapped?', Ira Chernus, 6 April 2008. Apr 7, 2008