Word.ws English Dictionary

pretribal

pretribal adjective: before the development of tribes.

Adjective

pretribal (not comparable)

  1. Before the development of tribes.
    • His social habits were still pretribal. The fairly large dwellings used by the Neanderthal men indicate that their hunting groups and settlements included large numbers of participants and their families.1949, Peter I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution, page 26

Origin of pretribal

From pre- + tribal.

Questions about pretribal

What does pretribal mean?
Pretribal means before the development of tribes.
What part of speech is pretribal?
Pretribal is an adjective.

Words near pretribal in the dictionary

  1. pretreaty
  2. pretriage
  3. pretrial
  4. pretrials
  5. pretrib
  6. pretribal
  7. pretribulation
  8. pretribulationism
  9. pretribulationist
  10. pretribulationists
  11. pretrigeminal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pretribal (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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