hoary

adjective / hohr-ee / hoariness / hoarier / hoariest

whitish-grey from aging

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.

G.K. Chesterton (What’s Wrong with the World)