oldness
oldness — noun
1. the condition of having existed for a long time, or the feeling that something i
the condition of having existed for a long time, or the feeling that something is no longer new — for example, the worn pages of a family Bible, or the faded paint on a wooden barn.
Yara could smell the oldness of the wooden chest as soon as Xiu opened its heavy lid.
the oldness of + [physical object] expressing age through the senses
The oldness of the village church gave the wedding photographs a deep, timeless feeling.
the oldness of + [place] used to evoke history or atmosphere
Lakshmi loved the oldness of the leather-bound poetry books more than any shiny new edition.
There was a comforting oldness in the kitchen, with its cracked tiles and Ada's grandmother's copper pans.
The oldness of the manuscript made every page turn feel like a small risk.
- antiquity
more formal; usually for objects, buildings, or eras of great historical age
- ancientness
near-synonym; emphasises being from a remote past, even rarer than 'oldness'
- age
the everyday word; can mean either the number of years or the quality of being old
文法句型
the oldness of [noun]
用法筆記
Uncountable; almost always appears as 'the oldness of [something]'. The plain noun 'age' is far more common in everyday speech — 'oldness' tends to appear in descriptive or literary writing where the writer wants to foreground the felt quality of being old rather than a measurable span of years.