pre-Adamite

American  

[pree-ad-uh-mahyt] / priˈæd əˌmaɪt /

noun

1. a person supposed to have existed before Adam.

2. a person who believes that there were people in existence before Adam.

---

adjective

1. Also pre-Adamic existing before Adam.

2. of or relating to the pre-Adamites.

Etymology

Origin of pre-Adamite

First recorded in 1655–65; pre- + Adam + -ite ¹

Example Sentences

As the dives are become subject to thy beck, I expected to have found thee on the throne of the pre-Adamite kings.”

From Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story; Vathek, an Arabian Tale by Beckford, William

Alas, he that speaks must use English, French, or some language which is partly conventional; and that pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are all trying to speak has no verbal sign.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 by Various

Enjoy whatever this palace affords: the treasures of the pre-Adamite Sultans, their bickering sabres, and those talismans that compel the Dives to open the subterranean expanses of the mountain of Kaf, which communicate with these.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 by Mabie, Hamilton Wright

Quite a Noah's Ark sort of person,—a fossil of the pre-Adamite period.

From Faith and Unfaith by Duchess

Further in the distance, through a dim exhalation, across the mists of eternities, I beheld vaguely the seventy-two pre-Adamite kings, with their seventy-two peoples, vanished forever.

From Humorous Ghost Stories by Scarborough, Dorothy