Noun: ancient
| Singular | ancient |
| Plural | ancients |
Sample Sentences
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Hetty and Mrs. Piper watched them with a lynx-eyed understanding and before the ancient was well upon his road his way was blocked by Hetty. [1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 131:]
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What is ancient for us was in its own time a reworking of what was ancient for the ancients. [1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 210:]
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Junius and Andronicus […] in Christianity […] were his ancients. [[1594], Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Iohn Windet, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page):]
Nouns inflected like ancient
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English auncyen, from Old French ancien, from Vulgar Latin *anteānus, composed of Latin ante (“before”) + -ānus (adjective-forming suffix). The non-etymological excrescent /t/ is by analogy with the common ending -ent. See: Latin Nouns '
ante'.