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Both can mean 'antiguo', but one is relative in age and the other implies thousands of years.
Side-by-side comparison
"Old" describes something or someone that has existed for a certain amount of time. It is relative: it can range from a few years to centuries. "An old car" = a car that is not new.
My grandfather is very old. He is 92.
That is an old building. It was built in 1920.
We are old friends. We met as children.
"Ancient" describes something from thousands of years ago, from a very remote past. "Ancient Rome" = Rome more than two thousand years ago. Not used for things from recent decades.
The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids.
We visited ancient ruins in Rome.
This is an ancient tradition dating back thousands of years.
Common mistake
- •"My ancient grandfather" is wrong unless he is thousands of years old: "ancient" describes civilizations or remote historical eras (Egypt, Rome, the Stone Age).
- •For people or things that are simply old, use "old."
Trick to remember it
- •"Old" = old in a relative sense (your grandfather, a 1920 house).
- •"Ancient" = from civilizations or remote eras, typically over a thousand years old.
- •Does it belong to history's distant past? "Ancient." Just relatively old? "Old."
Quick rule
- •Does it belong to a civilization or historical era from thousands of years ago? "Ancient".
- •Is it simply old in a relative sense? "Old".
Did you know?
The distinction between OLD and ANCIENT reflects an interesting philosophical question: at what point does something stop being merely "old" and become "ancient"? Historians generally use "Antiquity" to refer to the period of great classical civilizations up to approximately the 5th century A.D. Ancient Greece was ANCIENT Greece; the old house on the corner is OLD.
Practise what you learned
Exercise 1 · Pick the right one
My grandmother is quite _____ — she turned 89 last month.
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
The archaeologists found an _____ temple that was over 3,000 years old.
Exercise 3 · Form the word
Related word pairs
One is an event that made history, the other simply belongs to the past.
"Above" is at a higher level without contact; "over" implies covering, movement, or crossing.
'Currently' means 'at the present time'; 'actually' means 'in reality', not 'nowadays'.
"Actually" corrects or contrasts an assumption; "really" intensifies or confirms.
Bryan López
Founder of SpeakUP Academy