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ancient[ancient 词源字典]

ancient: [14] Like antique, ancient was originally, in Latin, an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -ānus, to produce the adjective *anteānus ‘going before’. In Old French this became ancien, and it passed into English via Anglo-Norman auncien. The final -t began to appear in the 15th century, by the same phonetic process as produced it in pageant and tyrant. The now archaic use of ancient as ‘standard, flag’ and as ‘standard-bearer’ (as most famously in Shakespeare’s ‘ancient Pistol’) arose from an alteration of ensign.
=> antique[ancient etymology, ancient origin, 英语词源]