Word.ws English Dictionary

preadult

preadult adjective: not yet adult.

Adjective

preadult (not comparable)

  1. Not yet adult.

Noun

preadult (plural preadults)

  1. One who is not yet an adult.
    • This species has been described from a series of specimens including holotype adult female and paratype adult females and males and preadults collected by Mr. E. G. Smyth on Acacia species at Oaxaco, Mexico, September 22, 1923, while he was engaged in a search through Mexico for parasitic enemies...1927, Biological Society of Washington, Smithsonian Institution, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 40, Biological Society of Washington, page 108
    • In May it transforms to a preadult, and about 15 days later it becomes mature. No males or winged forms of this species are known.1935, Milton Stover Eisenhower, United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook 1935, Washington, Office of Printers to House of Representatives, page 132

Examples of preadult in a sentence

  • This species has been described from a series of specimens including holotype adult female and paratype adult females and males and preadults collected by Mr.1927, Biological Society of Washington, Smithsonian Institution, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 40, Biological...
  • Sastry (1965) reared the scallop larvae to preadults by providing unicellular algae as food.1966, Alfred Clarence Redfield, Carl Richard Moore, Frank Rattray Lillie, The Biological Bulletin, Volume 130, Marine Biological...

Forms of preadult

pluralpreadults

Origin of preadult

From pre- + adult.

Questions about preadult

What does preadult mean?
Preadult means not yet adult.
How do you use preadult in a sentence?
This species has been described from a series of specimens including holotype adult female and paratype adult females and males and preadults collected by Mr.
What part of speech is preadult?
Preadult can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near preadult in the dictionary

  1. preadsorb
  2. preadsorbed
  3. preadsorbing
  4. preadsorption
  5. preadsorptions
  6. preadult
  7. preadulthood
  8. preadults
  9. preadverbial
  10. preadverbially
  11. preadvertise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preadult (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: “preadult.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preadult. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.