prehistoric

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: pre=his=tor=ic

CIDE DICTIONARY

prehistoric, a. 

 Of or pertaining to a period before written history begins; as, the prehistoric ages; prehistoric man.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

prehistoric, adj.
1 of or relating to the period before written records.
2 colloq. utterly out of date.

Derivative

prehistorian n. prehistorically adv. prehistory n.

Etymology

F pr{eacute}historique (as PRE-, HISTORIC)

DEVIL DICTIONARY

prehistoric

adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.

He lived in a period prehistoric,
When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
Born later, when Clio, celestial recorded,
Set down great events in succession and order,
He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
Orpheus Bowen

THESAURUS

prehistoric

aboriginal, ancestral, ancient, antediluvian, antepatriarchal, antiquated, atavistic, autochthonous, earliest, early, erstwhile, fore, former, fossil, humanoid, immemorial, late, old, old-fashioned, olden, once, onetime, passe, past, patriarchal, preadamite, preglacial, prehuman, previous, primal, prime, primeval, primitive, primogenial, primoprimitive, primordial, prior, pristine, protohistoric, protohuman, quondam, recent, sometime, then

ROGET THESAURUS

prehistoric

Oldness

N oldness, age, antiquity, cobwebs of antiquity, maturity, decline, decay, senility, seniority, eldership, primogeniture, archaism, thing of the past, relic of the past, megatherium, Sanskrit, tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law, old, ancient, antique, of long standing, time-honored, venerable, elder, eldest, firstborn, prime, primitive, primeval, primigenous, paleolontological, paleontologic, paleoanthropological, paleoanthropic, paleolithic, primordial, primordinate, aboriginal, diluvian, antediluvian, protohistoric, prehistoric, antebellum, colonial, precolumbian, patriarchal, preadamite, paleocrystic, fossil, paleozoolical, paleozoic, preglacial, antemundane, archaic, classic, medieval, Pre-Raphaelite, ancestral, black-letter, immemorial, traditional, prescriptive, customary, whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contr, inveterate, rooted, antiquated, of other times, rococo, of the old school, after-age, obsolete, out of date, out of fashion, out of it, stale, old-fashioned, behind the age, old-world, exploded, gone out, gone by, passe, run out, senile, time worn, crumbling, secondhand, old as the hills, old as Methuselah, old as Adam, old as history, Archeozoic, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Paleogene, Neocene, Quaternary, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, Recent, since the world was made, since the year one, since the days of Methuselah, vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.