OLD-WORLD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does old-world mean? 

• OLD-WORLD (adjective)
  The adjective OLD-WORLD has 1 sense:

1. characteristic of former times especially in Europe

  Familiarity information: OLD-WORLD used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OLD-WORLD (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characteristic of former times especially in Europe

Context example:

an old-world cottage

Similar:

nonmodern (not modern; of or characteristic of an earlier time)

 Context examples 

It was a country of rolling moors, lonely and dun-coloured, with an occasional church tower to mark the site of some old-world village.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The sight of it, with its bloodstained and ghost-blasted reputation, would in itself have been enough to send a thrill through my nerves; but when the words of my uncle made me suddenly realize that this strange summons was indeed for the two men who were concerned in that old-world tragedy, and that it was the playmate of my youth who had sent it, I caught my breath as I seemed vaguely to catch a glimpse of some portentous thing forming itself in front of us.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was the same meal and the same cooking as their Norse or German ancestors might have sat down to fourteen centuries before, and, indeed, as I looked through the steam of the dishes at the lines of fierce and rugged faces, and the mighty shoulders which rounded themselves over the board, I could have imagined myself at one of those old-world carousals of which I had read, where the savage company gnawed the joints to the bone, and then, with murderous horseplay, hurled the remains at their prisoners.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)