olden
- 01 C2 Proficiency
belonging to a time long ago in history.
relating to or characteristic of a previous era; almost exclusively used in the attributive position within the set phrase 'olden days'.
Simple“In the olden days, people used to write letters by hand instead of sending emails.”
In context“The storyteller spoke of the olden days when dragons were said to roam the mountains and magic was a part of everyday life.”
UsageUsually occurs as part of the fixed expression 'olden days'.
Teacher's tipThis word is rarely used in modern speech or formal writing except to create a nostalgic or fairy-tale tone; students should use 'ancient' or 'past' for general contexts.
PitfallIn the olden times, people traveled by horse. In the olden days, people traveled by horse.While 'olden times' is occasionally used, 'olden days' is the standard idiomatic expression for this word.
From Middle English olden, probably originally an inflected plural form of old (compare Old English ealdum, dative plural of eald (“old”)), but later reanalysed as equivalent to old + -en (“made of”). Otherwise derived from Old Norse aldinn (“ancient, old”).
From old + -en (“to make (adjective)”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.