oldness

From Middle English oldnesse, from Old English ealdnes, ealdnyss (“oldness; age”), equivalent to old +‎ -ness.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əʊldnəs/

oldness (usually uncountable, plural oldnesses)

1. The state of being old; age.
   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Romans 7:6:

     But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

   • 1795, Testimony at the trial of Sarah Sims for grand larceny at the Old Bailey, London, 20 May, 1795,

     I know it to be the property that the child wore at the time that I missed her, by the oldness of it, and the mending of it. I have not the least doubt about it.

   • 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 19, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section III:

     […] once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Ted’s were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics.

• agedness, elderliness, senectitude; see also Thesaurus:oldness

• Seldons, Selsdon