Word.ws English Dictionary

pre-Columbian

pre-Columbian adjective: before the voyages of Christopher Columbus of the 1490s which introduced greatly widened contacts between Eurasia and the Americas.

Adjective

pre-Columbian (not comparable)

  1. (historical) Before the voyages of Christopher Columbus of the 1490s which introduced greatly widened contacts between Eurasia and the Americas.
    • since pre-Columbian times
    • unknown in Europe in pre-Columbian times
  2. Referring to the cultures of the Americas before the European influence, specifically to the era before the continent was visited by Christopher Columbus.
    • pre-Columbian cultures
    • pre-Columbian civilizations

Examples of pre-Columbian in a sentence

  • In fact, the dating of pre-Columbian Andean cultures was largely a matter of guesswork.1961, Margaret A. Towle, The Ethnobotany of Pre-Columbian Peru, Transaction Publishers, →ISBN, page 2:
  • Boys trained to be warriors, but why did pre-Columbian peoples battle one another?2010, Marylou Kjelle, In Pre-Columbian America, Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 41:

Antonyms of pre-Columbian

Forms of pre-Columbian

alternative formprecolumbian
alternative formPrecolumbian

Origin of pre-Columbian

From pre- + Columbian.

Questions about pre-Columbian

What does pre-Columbian mean?
Pre-Columbian means before the voyages of Christopher Columbus of the 1490s which introduced greatly widened contacts between Eurasia and the Americas.
How do you use pre-Columbian in a sentence?
In fact, the dating of pre-Columbian Andean cultures was largely a matter of guesswork.
What part of speech is pre-Columbian?
Pre-Columbian is an adjective.

Words near pre-Columbian in the dictionary

  1. pre-Christian
  2. pre-Christians
  3. pre-Code
  4. pre-Codes
  5. pre-colonial
  6. pre-Columbian
  7. pre-combat
  8. pre-combustion
  9. pre-competition
  10. pre-conciliar
  11. pre-condition

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pre-Columbian (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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Cite this entry: “pre-Columbian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pre-columbian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.