Span-new
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 brand new archaic
"Had Augustine been archbishop of London, he might have seemed to succeed the British archbishops, and to have derived some right from them, contrary to his humour, who would lead all, but follow none; and therefore would not wear an old title, but have a span-new archbishop's chair carved out for himself."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Had Augustine been archbishop of London, he might have seemed to succeed the British archbishops, and to have derived some right from them, contrary to his humour, who would lead all, but follow none; and therefore would not wear an old title, but have a span-new archbishop's chair carved out for himself."
Etymology
From Middle English span-neue, from Old Norse spān-nȳr. Compare spick-and-span, spandy.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.