Adjacent Words

Hoary definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

HOARY, n. [See Hoar.] White or whitish; as the hoary willows.
1. White or gray with age; as hoary hairs; a hoary head.
Reverence the hoary head.
2. Moldy; mossy, or covered with a white pubescence.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair; "whose beard with age is hoar"-Coleridge; "nodded his hoary head" [syn: grey, gray, grey- haired, gray-haired, grey-headed, gray-headed, grizzly, hoar, hoary, white-haired]
2: ancient; "hoary jokes" [syn: hoary, rusty]
3: covered with fine whitish hairs or down [syn: canescent, hoary]

Merriam Webster's

adjective (hoarier; -est) Date: 1530 1. gray or white with or as if with age 2. extremely old ; ancient <hoary legends> • hoariness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. (hoarier, hoariest) 1 a (of hair) grey or white with age. b having such hair; aged. 2 old and trite (a hoary joke). 3 Bot. & Zool. covered with short white hairs. Derivatives: hoarily adv. hoariness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Hoary Hoar"y, a. 1. White or whitish. ``The hoary willows.'' --Addison. 2. White or gray with age; hoar; as, hoary hairs. Reverence the hoary head. --Dr. T. Dwight. 3. Hence, remote in time past; as, hoary antiquity. 4. Moldy; mossy; musty. [Obs.] --Knolles. 5. (Zo["o]l.) Of a pale silvery gray. 6. (Bot.) Covered with short, dense, grayish white hairs; canescent. Hoary bat (Zo["o]l.), an American bat (Atalapha cinerea), having the hair yellowish, or brown, tipped with white.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe a problem or subject as hoary, you mean that it is old and familiar. ...the hoary old myth that women are unpredictable. ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Hoar, white, gray.

Moby Thesaurus

acknowledged, admitted, advanced, advanced in life, advanced in years, age-old, aged, ageless, along in years, ancient, antediluvian, antique, argent, argentine, auld, canescent, chalky, conventional, cretaceous, customary, dateless, elderly, established, fixed, fleecy-white, folk, frost-beaded, frost-chequered, frost-covered, frost-fettered, frost-rent, frostbound, frosted, frostlike, frosty, frosty-faced, gray, gray with age, gray-haired, gray-headed, grizzled, grizzly, grown old, hallowed, handed down, heroic, hoar, hoar-frosted, hoaryheaded, immemorial, inveterate, lactescent, legendary, lily-white, long-established, long-standing, marble, marmoreal, milky, mythological, niveous, of long standing, of old, of the folk, of yore, old, old as Methuselah, old as history, old as time, old-time, olden, oral, patriarchal, platinum, prescriptive, pure white, received, recognized, rime-frosted, rimed, rooted, senectuous, silver, silver-bearded, silver-headed, silvered, silvery, snow-white, snowy, swan-white, time-honored, timeless, timeworn, traditional, tried and true, true-blue, understood, unwritten, venerable, white, white as snow, white with age, white-bearded, white-crowned, white-haired, worshipful, wrinkled, wrinkly, years old