bygone

UK/ˈbaɪɡɒn/US/ˈbaɪɡɔn/

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,270 of 15,258neutral

Bygone means belonging to a time now long past. A bygone age, bygone days, bygone customs.

It is nostalgic and almost always attached to age, era or days. Let bygones be bygones is the fixed phrase, meaning let past quarrels go — and there the plural noun means the past offences themselves. Note that the word is simply gone by, turned round.

Definitions of bygone

1adjectivebygoneBelonging to a time now long past.C1
“The old photographs show a bygone age of horse-drawn carts and gas lamps.”

bygone is a quality of pastness.

Where it comes from

From by + gone. See go by.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in History & Eras

Practise this word

bygone in the wild

Scully, who spent the first 18 years of his life here, has written a collection of coming-of-age poems, Mianus Village, celebrating its bygone way of life.
Mianus, Connecticut
Often Bantwal has been submerged in bygone years during the monsoon by overflowing river Netravati.
Netravati River
Modified, smaller-length versions are still, but rarely, worn by women in weddings in India and Pakistan to recreate bygone elegance.
Farshi pajama
The literal translation of the name means town (land) of the rocks, and indeed in bygone days two quarries were situated on the small townland. 2.
Ballynagarrick
Now a hotel, it retains the old colonial charms and its architecture is one of the few lasting proofs of the bygone British Era.
Alpine Hotel

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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