Meaning
In the style of a former era - methods, manners, or music remembered either as better than the new way or hopelessly behind it. The phrase praises and mocks in the same breath, and the listener decides which. The hyphenated old-school is the usual adjective; affection usually wins over mockery, but tone is everything. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The school in question is a school of thought: the adjective, as the record shows, shortens old school of thought, a body of followers of an old doctrine, and the nouns came first - American politics already divided itself in 1816 into New School and Old School Democrats, letters of 1862 recommended a well-settled, Old-School Presbyterian clergyman, and railwaymen mourned in 1962 that the deep interest of the old-school railwaymen in their job is dying. The Presbyterians made the terms official: the Old School party of Charles Hodge and Princeton, holding to traditional Calvinist orthodoxy in the Westminster standards, expelled the revival-friendly synods in 1837, splitting the church for a generation. The modern senses keep the double edge - Jamie Redknapp's 2018 old school free-kick, straight from the David Beckham playbook, is praise; a 2019 railway seat reservation with paper labels is faint blame; and the music sense, old-school hip hop, canonizes the late-1970s and 1980s sound against whatever came after.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- an old school tie
- of the old school
Usage Examples
- The optician's is proudly old school: brass fittings, a pupil chart, and an afternoon off for the races.
- Her old-school training showed in the dovetails; the customers came for the story as much as the joint.
- The gym's old-school corner - one barbell, one chalk bucket, no mirrors - is somehow always full.