Eld
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ɛld/
Origin
From Middle English elde, from Old English ieldu, eldo, ieldo ("age, period of time; period; time of life, years; mature or old age, eld; an age of the world, era, epoch"), from Proto-Germanic *aldį̄ ("eld, age"), from Proto-Germanic *aldaz ("grown up, mature, old"), from Proto-Germanic *alanÄ… ("to grow, breed, nourish"), from Proto-Indo-European *al- ("to raise, feed"). Cognate with Scots eild ("age"), North Frisian jelde ("age"), German Älte ("age"), Danish ælde ("eld, age"), Icelandic elli ("eld, age"). Related also to Gothic ðŒ°ðŒ»ðŒ³ðƒ (alds, "generation, age"), Old English alan ("to grow up, nourish"). More at old.
Full definition of eld
Noun
eld
(usually uncountable; plural elds)- (rare or dialectal) One's age, age in years, period of life.
- 1868, John Eadie, A Biblical cyclopædia:The experience of many years gave old men peculiar qualification for various offices; and elders, or men of a ripe or advanced eld or age, were variously employed under the Mosaic law.
- 1913, Paulist Fathers, Catholic world:Promptly appeared a paragon, aged twenty-five or thereabouts, and exhibiting all the steadiness and serenity of advanced eld.
- (archaic or poetic) Old age, senility; an old person.
- 1912, Herbert Van Allen Ferguson, Rhymes of eld:The withered limbs of eld, the thin, gray hair ...
- 1912, Arthur S. Way, translating Euripides, Medea, Heinemann 1946, p. 329:the alien wife
No crown of honour was as eld drew on. - 1904, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Sun's Shame, II, lines 1-3''As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress''Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth''May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth, -
- (archaic or poetic) Time; an age, an indefinitely long period of time.
- (archaic or poetic) Former ages, antiquity, olden times.
- 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska 2005, p. 38:Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with her lover.