What you think it means: Old, out of date。妳以為單詞的含義是：舊的，過時的。
What it really means: Not produced, used, or needed。單詞的真正含義是：未生產的，未使用的，不需要的。
You’ll see this one in the tech industry a lot. People in tech article comments will comment that a phone is obsolete when they really mean that it’s out of date. The literal definition of obsolete is an item that it isn’t produced, needed, or used anymore. An example of this is is the steam engine. It’s largely inefficient compared to today’s combustion engine and even more inefficient than the emerging electric engines. Thus, steam engines are not used, produced, or needed anymore. Yes, they are also old and out of date, but obsolete is kind of the next step after old and out of date。
這個單詞在科技行業經常出現。在科技文章評論中，人們會說某個電話機obsolete(未使用的)，其實他們是想說電話機過時了。Obsolete的字面定義是指某物未被生產、不被需要或不再使用。壹個例子就是蒸汽機。跟如今的內燃機相比，蒸汽機相當不給力，甚至都比不上新興的電發動機;因此，蒸汽機是不被使用的、不被生產的或不再被需要的。沒錯，蒸汽機也是舊的、過時的，但obsolete是“舊”與“過時”更後壹步的階段了。
(來源：新東方在