Word.ws English Dictionary

preliterary

preliterary adjective: before the development of literature.

Adjective

preliterary (not comparable)

  1. Before the development of literature.
    • In the mid-nineteenth century, the new science of anthropology increased American and European contact with preliterary societies.2012, Dan Story, Should Christians Be Environmentalists?, page 46

Origin of preliterary

From pre- + literary.

Questions about preliterary

What does preliterary mean?
Preliterary means before the development of literature.
What part of speech is preliterary?
Preliterary is an adjective.

Words near preliterary in the dictionary

  1. prelistens
  2. prelisting
  3. prelists
  4. prelit
  5. preliteracy
  6. preliterary
  7. preliterate
  8. preliterates
  9. preliterature
  10. prelitigation
  11. prelitter

Source and license

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