Word.ws English Dictionary

preliberal

preliberal adjective: before the liberal period of society, i.e. in feudal or authoritarian times.

Adjective

preliberal (not comparable)

  1. Before the liberal period of society, i.e. in feudal or authoritarian times.
    • They were, then, preliberal, premodern.2007 June 18, Edward Rothstein, “Postmodern Thoughts, Illuminated by the Practices of a Premodern Tribe”, in New York Times
    • But if we hope to create a humane postliberal future, we cannot pretend that the age of liberalism did not happen or that its basic contours can simply be jettisoned in some sort of restoration of an idyllic preliberal age.2018, Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 184
    Antonyms:
    postliberal

Antonyms of preliberal

Origin of preliberal

From pre- + liberal.

Questions about preliberal

What does preliberal mean?
Preliberal means before the liberal period of society, i.e. in feudal or authoritarian times.
What part of speech is preliberal?
Preliberal is an adjective.

Words near preliberal in the dictionary

  1. preleukemic
  2. prelexical
  3. prelexically
  4. prelibation
  5. prelibations
  6. preliberal
  7. preliberation
  8. prelicensing
  9. prelicensure
  10. prelicked
  11. prelife

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preliberal (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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