pre-Columbian
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of pre-Columbian
First recorded in 1885–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A case in point is the Inca Road, arguably the greatest infrastructure accomplishment of pre-Columbian times.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 10, 2025
"The whistles have a very unique construction, and we don't know of any comparable musical instrument from other pre-Columbian cultures or from other historical and contemporary contexts," says Frühholz.
From Science Daily • Nov. 19, 2024
Beginning in the 1500s, he said, “Spanish missionaries became deeply familiar with pre-Columbian traditions in an effort to combat them and convert local populations,” and practices such as amate production were discouraged or even banned.
From New York Times • Apr. 11, 2024
In the contemporary, helter-skelter sweep of Mexico City, there is one place — in the southern borough of Xochimilco — where a vision of a watery, pre-Columbian capital may still be imagined.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 21, 2024
Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
