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View synonyms for ancient history

ancient history

noun

  1. the study or a course of study of history before the end of the Western Roman Empire a.d. 476.
  2. information or an event of the recent past that is common knowledge or is no longer pertinent:

    Last week's news is ancient history.

  3. an event, as in a person's life, that occurred in the remote past and has no practical relationship with the present:

    She was my best friend in high school, but that's ancient history now.



ancient history

noun

  1. the history of the ancient world from the earliest known civilizations to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 a.d
  2. informal.
    a recent event or fact sufficiently familiar to have lost its pertinence


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Word History and Origins

Origin of ancient history1

First recorded in 1585–95

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Idioms and Phrases

A past event, as in She's talking about her sea voyage, but that's ancient history , or And then there was his divorce, but you don't want to hear ancient history . This hyperbolic idiom transfers the field of ancient history to a much-repeated tale.

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Example Sentences

Does any of this ancient history of the bellbottom era sound familiar to you, fellow millennial geeks?

It seems to me like ancient history, whether fact or fiction.

But that may be ancient history in Providence, where the still-beloved figure may seek one more go of it in City Hall.

What he could not foresee was that a half century later Freedom Summer would not be ancient history.

D-Day was 70 years ago, and to midshipmen of today, it is all but ancient history.

It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without some knowledge of ancient history and comparative mythology.

The ruined arches of the old bridge carry the imagination back into the ancient history of the town.

Boucher, moved to the depths of his consciousness by Diderot, resolved to paint a picture taken from ancient history.

Yes; she was the love of my life—I may say it now, for it is ancient history—and she loved you.

I am personally a trifle sceptical on this point, and believe that the key to this part of ancient history is yet to be found.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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