Something is obsolete when newer things have pushed it out of use. Fax machines, video rental shops, the round plug on the back of an old computer.
Obsolete is stronger than old. A cast-iron pan is old and still the best thing in the kitchen; a floppy disk is obsolete, because something better arrived and took its place. Things become obsolete, or are rendered obsolete by a new model. Obsolescent means on the way there but not gone yet, and planned obsolescence is the trick of building a product so that it stops being usable on schedule. Dictionaries use the word as a label, so an obsolete word is one that has dropped out of the language, which is why you meet it in brackets beside words like thou. In American business writing it even shows up as a verb, as in the new chip obsoleted the old one, which sounds strange everywhere else.
1adjectiveobsoleteNo longer used, because something newer has replaced it.
“The software is obsolete and no longer gets security updates.”
2adjectivewordOf a word or a usage: no longer found in the living language.
“The dictionary marks that sense as obsolete.”
Also accepted in games: outdated
Latin obsolētus meant worn out, gone out of use. It is the past participle of obsolesco, to wear out, fall into disuse, grow old and decay. The picture underneath is not a shiny replacement arriving but a thing quietly wearing away until nobody reaches for it any more. English took the participle and kept the sense: not broken, just left behind.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂el-
Latin
obsolētus
English, today
obsolete
Built from
Borrowed from Latin obsolētus. Latin obsolētus (“worn out, gone out of use”), past participle of obsolesco (“to wear out, fall into disuse, grow old, decay”); see obsolesce.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, History & Eras