Word.ws English Dictionary

ante litteram

ante litteram prepositional phrase: before the term existed; before the term was coined.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Before the term existed; before the term was coined.
    • In the fifteenth century, he espoused ecology ante litteram. He endorsed ecology before the term "ecology" existed.
    • What could have been a moral victory or arguably a feminist struggle ante litteram remains a farcical squabble between a nagging wife and a ridiculous old man.2007, Patricia Vilches, Gerald E. Seaman, Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, page 191
    Synonyms:
    avant la lettre

Synonyms of ante litteram

Origin of ante litteram

From Latin ante (“before”) + litteram, accusative singular of littera (“letter, writing”).

Questions about ante litteram

What does ante litteram mean?
Ante litteram means before the term existed; before the term was coined.
What part of speech is ante litteram?
Ante litteram is a prepositional phrase.

Words near ante litteram in the dictionary

  1. antdom
  2. ante
  3. ante bellum
  4. ante chamber
  5. ante in
  6. ante litteram
  7. ante meridiem
  8. ante over
  9. ante up
  10. ante-
  11. ante-cabinet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ante litteram (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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