VENERABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does venerable mean? 

• VENERABLE (adjective)
  The adjective VENERABLE has 2 senses:

1. impressive by reason of age

2. profoundly honored

  Familiarity information: VENERABLE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VENERABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Impressive by reason of age

Context example:

a venerable sage with white hair and beard

Similar:

old ((used especially of persons) having lived for a relatively long time or attained a specific age)

Derivation:

venerableness (the quality of deserving veneration)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Profoundly honored

Synonyms:

august; revered; venerable

Context example:

revered holy men

Similar:

honorable; honourable (worthy of being honored; entitled to honor and respect)

Derivation:

venerability; venerableness (the quality of deserving veneration)

 Context examples 

All that was venerable ceased here.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I see him now, excellent and venerable old man!

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Our venerable instructor was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A threadbare and venerable device, but useful upon occasion.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!" Martin exhorted.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I spent a few minutes in assisting a venerable Italian priest, who was endeavouring to make a porter understand, in his broken English, that his luggage was to be booked through to Paris.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But when the venerable explorer hurtled by, the data showed that the lightning-associated radio signals didn't match the details of the radio signals produced by lightning here at Earth.

(Juno Solves 39-Year Old Mystery of Jupiter Lightning, NASA)

A very merry lunch it was, for everything seemed fresh and funny, and frequent peals of laughter startled a venerable horse who fed near by.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for determining the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the punishment of vice and protection of innocence.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)