An archaic or obsolete spelling of 'ancient,' used in older English texts to mean very old or from a long time ago.
From Middle English and Old French ancien, from Latin ante (before). This variant spelling was common before standardization of English orthography.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries used 'antient' regularly—it shows how English spelling was still fluid in the 16th-17th centuries, with multiple acceptable ways to write the same word before dictionaries standardized usage.
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