hoary
Americanadjective
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having grey or white hair
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white or whitish-grey in colour
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ancient or venerable
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of hoary
Explanation
Use the adjective hoary to describe something that is old and worn out — like the hoary jokes your great uncle Albert clings to. The word hoary can also be used to describe something that is white or gray with age. Santa is usually depicted with a hoary beard and hoary hair, although sometimes mall Santas have to fake this with wigs and artificial beards. Hoary can also mean covered with fine white hairs or with down — "The hoary leaves felt like velvet to the touch."
Vocabulary lists containing hoary
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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.
See Examples For:
This hoary habit embodies the conservative philosophy of family life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
But sometime over this last winter — that numbing, hoary stretch between mid-February and March — I decided this might be the year to reclaim a bit of seasonal delight.
From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2025
The company of performers assembled to perform this hoary property consists of has-beens, wannabes, klutzes and martyred veterans.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2025
Other animals identified as a potential source of the pandemic were the masked palm civet, which was also associated with the Sars outbreak in 2003, as well as hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2024
Jerome proclaimed in a hoary voice, shaking his fist in the air.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
We first see the chef, Andy Jones, on the phone, contending with one of the hoarier clichés of overworked men, that of having missed an important event in the development of one of his children.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2021
Since the turn of the century, three paths have emerged for washed-up stars, displacing hoarier options like “Hollywood Squares.”
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 2, 2019
Without a bona fide star role like Lilli, though, you might be hard-pressed to put up with some of the hoarier aspects of “Kiss Me, Kate’s” sexual politics, in Sam and Bella Spewack’s book.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 14, 2019
Perhaps inevitably, “One Arm” is sketchier and hoarier than either of those works.
From New York Times ● Jun. 10, 2011
The stars of the past and the beacons are paling, The heavens and the waters are hoarier of hue: But the heart in us chants not an all unavailing Farewell and adieu.
From A Century of Roundels by Algernon Charles Swinburne
With “Elvis,” Luhrmann matches Presley’s drive and instinctive charisma and raises him for sheer nerve, simultaneously hewing to the hoariest conventions of Hollywood rise-and-fall biopics and seeking to gleefully subvert them at every turn.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 22, 2022
The weapons—50 of them, all B61 nuclear bombs, which can be dropped from F-16 and Tornado jet fighters—are among the Cold War’s hoariest relics.
From Slate ● Oct. 22, 2019
This is the film’s hoariest plot device, but it does serve a purpose in getting Ben to grow up.
From Salon ● Jun. 14, 2019
Their goal is to help a lesbian student fulfill her dream of taking her girlfriend to that hoariest and most sacred of teenage social rituals, the prom.
From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2019
Partially clad in the remnants of a navy working rig—tattered canvas jumper and wide trousers—the man looked the embodiment of one of Neptune's hoariest veterans.
From Gold Out of Celebes by Aylward Edward Dingle
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
