Meanings
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1
noun
a hypothetical person or member of a race believed to have existed before the biblical Adam
The treatise argued that ancient fossils belonged to a pre-Adamite race.
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2
noun
a believer in a doctrine that human beings existed before Adam
The theologian was denounced as a pre-Adamite for rejecting a single biblical ancestry.
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3
adj
existing before Adam or imagined as belonging to a prehuman world
The empty landscape seemed pre-Adamite, untouched by any human presence.
Thesaurus
Etymology
From New Latin praeadamita, combining Latin prae-, 'before,' with Adam + -ite. Seventeenth-century writer Isaac La Peyrere made pre-Adamite theory influential by arguing that peoples existed before Adam. Later uses range from historical theology and racial speculation to a loose literary adjective meaning primeval or prehuman.