ancientry

noun

1. (archaic, countable, uncountable)The quality or fact of being ancient or very old.

   “PEN, made of reed, cut, &c. like our pens, is of classical ancientry; but the first certain account of quill pens is in 636, in Isidore.”

   “The far past and to-day rarely fail to please; it is the day before yesterday and yesterday which have lost their power to charm us by novelty and instant sympathy with our moods, and have also not yet acquired the glamour of ancientry, or the sentimental forgiveness we are willing to bestow on ancestors sufficiently remote.”

2. (archaic, countable, uncountable)Old-fashioned style, elaborate ceremony.

   “[…] wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.”

   “So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and ancientry; and now there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the verandahs of the Central Telegraph Office.”

   “Shuffling from ceremony to ceremony, his sere head raised against its natural desire to drop forward on his chest and covered with as many pits and fissures as a cracked cheese, he personifies the ancientry of his high office.”

3. (archaic, countable, uncountable)Elderly people, elders, ancients (collectively).

   “I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—”

   “The man and all his kin, the ancientry of England, were at deadly enmity with this Welshman who had curbed their power, and was bringing in a horde of new men to take their places.”

4. (archaic, countable, uncountable)Something ancient (countable); ancient things (collectively).

   “Kings Lynn is a pleasant town to ramble about. […] In its quiet and more secluded streets you come upon bits of ancientry, the waifs and strays of monastic times […]”

   “O fair, sweet lady of the morn, Walking breast-high amid the pines, Hast thou the darkling raven taught To croak her fabled ancientries?”

5. (archaic, countable, uncountable)The olden days; antiquity.

   “Ere all, in ancientry æterne, was God (Holy and blessed always be His name) In essence inconceivable.”