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
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
One hates to indulge hoary ideas about happiness being bad for songwriters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2025
It was a hoary restatement of Lamarck’s idea—of adaptation morphing directly into hereditary change—decades after geneticists had pointed out the conceptual errors of Lamarckism.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Grapes and their relative merits are one of the hoarier topics in wine.
From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2022
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
But this time, in a series of meetings on Tuesday, the Republican lawmakers brushed him off, shrugged that the romance was over, then tacked on that hoariest of evasions: It’s not you, it’s us.
From Slate ● Dec. 13, 2023
“Mrs. America” paints its leading lady not as a villain but a plausible female version of that hoariest of contemporary TV conventions: the antihero.
From New York Times ● Apr. 10, 2020
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
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
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 W. H. (William Henry) Rhodes
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.
