Word.ws English Dictionary

preexistentism

preexistentism noun: the theory that souls exist prior to their association with human bodies.

Noun

preexistentism (uncountable)

  1. The theory that souls exist prior to their association with human bodies.
    • The soul either exists before its union with the body (preexistentism), or it is created by God at the same time with the body (creationism or coexistentism), or it springs up from physical generation (traducianism, evolution system). These are the principal hypotheses on the origin of the soul[.]1840, G. F. Wiggers, “Augustine’s reasons for his theory”, in An Historical Presentation of Augustinism and Pelagianism from the Original Sources, Andover: Gould, Newman & Saxton, page 280

Origin of preexistentism

From preexistent + -ism.

Questions about preexistentism

What does preexistentism mean?
Preexistentism means the theory that souls exist prior to their association with human bodies.
What part of speech is preexistentism?
Preexistentism is a noun.

Words near preexistentism in the dictionary

  1. preexisted
  2. preexistence
  3. preexistences
  4. preexistency
  5. preexistent
  6. preexistentism
  7. preexisting
  8. preexisting condition
  9. preexisting conditions
  10. preexists
  11. preexpectation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preexistentism (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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