archaistic

comparative more archaistic · superlative most archaistic

1. Pertaining to an archaist; deliberately archaic, old-fashioned in an affected way.

   The emperor Augustus introduced an archaistic revival of ancient virtue and ancient religion, which caused the poem of Lucretius On the Nature of Things to become unpopular, and it remained so until the Renaissance.

   1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.27

1. uncountableArchaistic themes, motifs, items, etc.

   As in the case of Renaissance Italy, it is precisely the presence of the archaistic in the modern that is so fascinating to the cultural historian.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 138