yesteryear
yesteryear Lexical Profile
yesteryear Game Scores & Validity
• noun
Time gone by, especially the not-too-distant past viewed with nostalgia.
"The museum's new exhibition features vintage advertisements and household appliances of yesteryear."
Last year; the year immediately preceding the current one (archaic or poetic).
"The harvests of yesteryear were far more bountiful than what the farmers gathered this autumn."
• adverb
During the previous year, or in a bygone era.
"The grand coastal hotels that thrived yesteryear now stand mostly empty during the winter months."
Word Nuance & Usage
Although originally coined to mean literally 'last year,' in modern English 'yesteryear' is used almost exclusively in a nostalgic or literary sense to mean 'the recent past' or 'bygone days,' particularly in the phrase 'of yesteryear.'
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in 1870 by the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti—modeled on 'yesterday'—to translate the Old French word 'antan' in François Villon's famous refrain 'Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?' ('Where are the snows of yesteryear?').