BYGONE

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does bygone mean? 

• BYGONE (noun)
  The noun BYGONE has 1 sense:

1. past events to be put aside

  Familiarity information: BYGONE used as a noun is very rare.

• BYGONE (adjective)
  The adjective BYGONE has 1 sense:

1. well in the past; former

  Familiarity information: BYGONE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BYGONE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Past events to be put aside

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

bygone; water under the bridge

Context example:

let bygones be bygones

Hypernyms ("bygone" is a kind of...):

past; past times; yesteryear (the time that has elapsed)

Derivation:

bygone (well in the past; former)

• BYGONE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Well in the past; former

Synonyms:

bygone; bypast; departed; foregone; gone

Context example:

relics of a departed era

Similar:

past (earlier than the present time; no longer current)

Derivation:

bygone (past events to be put aside)

 Context examples 

This was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more air of comfort than any I had seen.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and had always loved me tenderly.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Often in bygone wars had the Moors tempted the hot-blooded Spaniards from their places of strength by such pretended flights, but there were men upon the hill to whom every ruse and trick of war were as their daily trade and practice.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

How difficult it was to realize that the violet line upon the far horizon was well advanced to that great river upon which huge steamers ran, and folk talked of the small affairs of life, while we, marooned among the creatures of a bygone age, could but gaze towards it and yearn for all that it meant!

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

After tea the children left us; and we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me—she was afraid of saying it to anybody else—till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think I am dying.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)