obsolete
/ˈɒbsəliːt
/adjective
1No longer produced or used; out of date: the disposal of old and obsolete machinery the phrase was obsolete after 1625...
- Apparently the delay is due to some of the components being ancient and obsolete (dating back as far as 1999).
- One minute, happy and in love, the next he felt like a wet newspaper, out of date, obsolete, discarded in the rain.
- Indeed, it's fairly normal to find that many lines in opening books are dated and obsolete even before the book hits the stores!
Synonyms
out of date, outdated, outmoded, old-fashioned;
no longer in use, disused, fallen into disuse, superannuated, outworn, antiquated, antediluvian, anachronistic, discarded, discontinued, old, dated, antique, archaic, ancient, fossilized, extinct, defunct, dead, bygone, out of fashion, out, behind the times;
French démodé, passé, vieux jeu
informal old hat, out of the ark, geriatric, prehistoric
British informal past its sell-by date
2 Biology (Of a part or characteristic of an organism) less developed than formerly or in a related species; rudimentary; vestigial.In the other three families the maxillary palps are vestigial or obsolete....
- In most other insects the occiput is either obsolete or soldered to the hind part of the epicranium.
verb [with object] chiefly US
Cause (a product or idea) to become obsolete by replacing it with something new: we’re trying to stimulate the business by obsoleting last year’s designs...
- So Dalton declared: ‘the focus is to show not only the progression of the technology but also that customers who have invested in it aren't obsoleting their product.’
- It's difficult not to be really impressed with a product that is so improved over its predecessors it obsoletes them.
- So what is this magic surveillance technology that confused him and obsoleted the court?
Derivatives
obsoletely
- People submitted over one hundred suggestions - many are obsoletely hilarious.
obsoleteness
/ noun ...- By the time I first came to live in England in the 1960s, and for years thereafter, the obsoleteness of the Royal Academy as a benign factor in the life of contemporary art was simply assumed as a fact.
- The context for such a volume is the possibility that musicology might be saved from obsoleteness by such boundary-crossings.
- It was like many towns in that part of the country in its poverty and obsoleteness.
obsoletism
- Like all hardware technology, obsoletism is right around the corner.
- Seeing no real hope in any previous upgrades I clung to the software until its recent demise into obsoletism.
- Many of their prize web sites are quietly moving along to obsoletism or moving towards being banned altogether by the search engines.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin obsoletus 'grown old, worn out', past participle of obsolescere 'fall into disuse'.