most ancient

ADJECTIVE

old, often very old

Synonyms

STRONGEST

age-old antique archaic hoary old-fashioned timeworn venerable

STRONG

aged antediluvian bygone elderly fossil oldie relic remote

WEAK

antiquated back number been around creaky early few miles on lot of mileage moth-eaten obsolete old goat older out-of-date outmoded primal primeval primordial rusty superannuated worse for wear

Antonyms

STRONGEST

current fresh modern new

STRONG

young

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

But according to the “NOVA” presentation “Mammal Origins,” our most ancient ancestors existed as long ago as 270 million years.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 10, 2026

"While the last universal common ancestor is the most ancient organism we can study with evolutionary methods," said Goldman, "some of the genes in its genome were much older."

From Science Daily • Feb. 10, 2026

Olfaction is the most ancient of animal senses, said Catherine Price, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Sydney in Australia.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 1, 2024

Rot and death would spread through their venerable trunks and crumple their limbs — but their roots and stumps, cradled by the continent’s most ancient mountains, lived on in the sandy, acidic Appalachian soil.

From Salon • Dec. 18, 2023

In contrast, most ancient Southwest Asian crops exhibit just one of the alternative wild variants or alternative transforming mutations, suggesting that all modern varieties of that particular crop stem from only a single domestication.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond