pre-Adamite

Meanings

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 3
   adj

   existing before Adam or imagined as belonging to a prehuman world

   The empty landscape seemed pre-Adamite, untouched by any human presence.

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.

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images