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:
Lyrically, Kahan is reckoning with his newfound fame – without recycling hoary old clichés where "every hotel room looks the same" and "nobody understands the real me".
From BBC ● Apr. 25, 2026
“Spring” is a densely packed wall, interrupted by two doorways, which causes Ms. Yukhnovich’s floral interventions to cluster particularly close together, suggesting the sudden bursting forth of life following the hoary months.
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 samples from the stall that contained the coronavirus also contained DNA from a variety of animals, including dogs, rabbits, hoary bamboo rats, Malayan porcupines and masked palm civets.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2024
It consisted mostly of a hoary midnight-blue Japanese kimono.
From "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger
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
Unfortunately, Mr. Urban’s play is far hoarier than Mr. Lucas’s delicate, moving romantic fantasy.
From New York Times ● Feb. 18, 2014
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 Swinburne, Algernon Charles
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
Maybe we can finally talk about how Jane the Virgin took on the hoariest storytelling device around—a cancer plotline?!—and really made it sing, with the cold waters of the north Atlantic nipping at our toes.
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2018
Where St. John focused on diversity and folk music, Wu Han is concentrating on that hoariest of classical-music tropes, the city of Vienna.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 5, 2018
The hoariest of the cliches about financial markets is that they hate uncertainty.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 31, 2016
One by one the elements have yielded to his sway, nature has revealed her hoariest secrets to his ken, and heaven thrown wide its portals to his spirit.
From Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches. by Rhodes, W. H. (William Henry)
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.
