ancients
- 1The people of the classical world, such as ancient Greece and Rome, especially its writers and philosophers.
The ancients mapped the stars with remarkable accuracy long before telescopes existed.
Renaissance scholars revered the ancients and translated their works into Latin.
Oppositemoderns
Note
A plural with no singular behind it. One Greek philosopher is not 'an ancient' in this sense, only one of the ancients. It nearly always takes the definite article and a plural verb: the ancients mapped, the ancients held. It names a collective authority, the thinkers later ages measured themselves against, rather than a list of individuals.
- 2Plural of ancient.
Local legend spoke of the ancients who once ruled the valley.
The carvings depicted ancients seated upon great stone thrones.
Note
A regular plural that carries every meaning of the singular with it. Besides very old people and people of ancient times, it can name the senior members of the Inns of Court in British legal usage. In older English it could also mean banners, an archaic use, and, rarely and now obsolete, the ensigns who bore them. The fixed sense of classical writers and thinkers is the 'classical antiquity' meaning.
ancients is a form of ancient
ancient, noun: Someone who lived in times long past, especially in the early periods of history. Full entry
- Forms
- ancientancients plural
- Spelling
- ancient → ancients: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /s/.
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