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The sense you will actually hear is ‘very old-fashioned’ — ideas, rules, machines, or relatives that feel stuck in a lost age. Though actually the word is carrying a story in the background. Ante- means ‘before’, and the middle is Latin for a flood: the great flood in the Bible, the one with Noah’s ark. So the literal picture is ‘from before that flood’, older than almost anything in that world-story. When someone calls your phone antediluvian, they are not giving a history lesson; they are laughing, a little sharply, at how ancient it feels. It is a heavy, word. You can understand it as ‘old-fashioned to a silly degree’; you do not need to drop it into daily chat. There is also a dry use for things imagined as belonging to that deep ‘before the flood’ past, but the everyday hit is the jab at something out of date.
老古董的；過時得離譜（字面是聖經大洪水以前；現在多半用來挖苦「舊到不像話」）
組成From ante- (‘before in time’) + Latin dīluvium (‘a flood’) + -an (‘of / belonging to’). The flood is Noah’s flood in Genesis. Dīluvium is from a Latin verb ‘to wash away’, built on a word for washing.
同家族的字
- delugefrom the same Latin dīluvium, ‘a flood’
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
antediluvianadj/ˌæn.tɪ.dɪˈluː.vɪ.ən/
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biblicallifestylereligionBelonging or pertaining to, or existing in, the time prior to the great flood described in Genesis, or (by extension) to a great or destructive flood or deluge described in other mythologies.
- [P]erhaps ſome perſons might outlive Methuſelah; the Text intending onely the maſculine line of Seth, conduceable unto the Genealogy of our Saviour, and the antediluvian Chronology.
- For Noah, vvho had no doubt preach'd againſt the Vices of the Antediluvian VVorld, and againſt Drunkenneſs among the reſt, muſt certainly knovv the Uſe of the Vine, and the Abuſe of it too; hovv elſe did he come to plant it at all, and to preſs the Juice out for Drinking it at all?
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Of animals and plants: long extinct; prehistoric.
- Having already described him [the whale] in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archæological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view.
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Of a person or thing: very old; ancient.
- [H]is eldest son Bo-bo, […] let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished.
- On the shore were the remains of an antediluvian forest with ugly black stumps showing, and further up an old stubby deserted lighthouse.
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Of attitudes, ideas, etc.: extremely old-fashioned, especially to a laughable extent; antiquated.
- Those ideas are antediluvian.
- If, by any miſchance, and in an evil hour, ſome country couſin, not knovving my vvays, or ſome antediluvian prig, not minding them, happen to fall upon me vvith formal ſpeeches, vvhere I can make no eſcape, a fit of yavvning takes me immediately, and I am demoliſhed for the reſt of the day.
antediluviannoun/ˌæn.tɪ.dɪˈluː.vɪ.ən/
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biblicallifestylereligionA person who lived in the time prior to the great flood described in Genesis, especially one of the biblical patriarchs.
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A very old person.
- From what cursed old antediluvian, who lived before the invention of the spinning-jennies, she learned this craft, Heaven only knows; […]
- He was a boy in form, and an antediluvian in feature. Some thought […] that he was really and truly a Brownie.
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A person with extremely old-fashioned attitudes, ideas, etc., especially to a laughable extent; a fogey or old fogey.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。