Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or being a culture not having a written language.
- n. A person belonging to such a culture.
Wiktionary
- adj. of a culture that has not yet developed a written language
- adj. of a person who has not yet learned to read and write
- n. a member of such a culture
WordNet 3.0
- adj. not yet having acquired the ability to read and write
- adj. used of a society that has not developed writing
Examples
“In the end I found both 'preliterate' and 'preliteracy' in the 1961 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.”
“Neither 'preliterate' nor 'preliteracy' are registered in the 1942 Chicago Dictionary of American English.”
“The 1949 edition of the Funk and Wagnall New Standard Dictionary lists 'preliterate' only.”
“She learned the world, she writes, through her senses, through a "preliterate" understanding of the world.”
“In preliterate societies, in the absence of artificial means of fertility regulation, pregnancies are spaced several years apart by unconscious physiological mechanisms based on breastfeeding.”
Who Wants More Kids?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“In preliterate and in preindustrial urban societies, socially successful individuals commonly had larger than average families.”
Who Wants More Kids?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“New Dan Brown book expected to create rip in space time continuum, reverting human beings to a preliterate culture.”
A Progressive on the Prairie » Weekend Edition: 8-22 » Print
“Lift the frame, and you reveal a capital letter: It ' s simple and elegant, and makes perfect sense for preliterate persons.”
“Moreover, this method does not depend on access to prerecorded texts, which makes it an ideal tool for writing histories of preliterate societies.”
“Some sort of collapse, nervous or physical, after going through similar experiences as Kirn's, seems mandatory for Ivy League initiates: "My education was running in reverse as my mind shed its outermost layer of signs and symbols and shrank back to its dumb, preliterate core.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘preliterate’.
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More Adjectival Arcana
List of adjectives such as everduring that do not frequent common speech and writing. A continuation of my list Adjectival Arcana, which had grown to over 7700 words and had become far too cumbersome.
transpontine, fetichistic, everduring, tachygraphic, tachygraphical, holographic, holographical, spectrobolographic, autographic, chirographal, autographal, ipsographic and 1419 more...
Tweets
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