Word.ws English Dictionary

prelinguistic

prelinguistic adjective: preceding the use of true language.

Adjective

prelinguistic (not comparable)

  1. Preceding the use of true language
    • Look, you know, a grunted uh, I mean — which is what I use to fill up a silence to show I'm conscious while I'm groping for a word — is, like, prelinguistic language.2009 January 11, William Safire, “Haircut”, in New York Times
    • Video a prelinguistic child with its mother. Show the recording to the mother and ask her which of the baby's noises and gestures she believes are intentional communication.2013, Alison Wray, Aileen Bloomer, Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies, Third Edition, page 35

Origin of prelinguistic

From pre- + linguistic.

Words formed from prelinguistic

Questions about prelinguistic

What does prelinguistic mean?
Prelinguistic means preceding the use of true language.
What part of speech is prelinguistic?
Prelinguistic is an adjective.

Words near prelinguistic in the dictionary

  1. prelims
  2. prelinearized
  3. prelinen
  4. prelingual
  5. prelingually
  6. prelinguistic
  7. prelinguistically
  8. prelipoprotein
  9. prelipoproteins
  10. preliquefied
  11. preliquidation

Source and license

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