prehistory
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.75 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Along the way, elders of the Delaware, Lushootseed, Tsimshian, Colville, and Creek tribes have provided a comparative perspective on the long time frame of Keresan prehistory and culture."
- "“We don’t find evidence for that sort of thing anywhere in prehistory.”"
- "I was a town boy through and through. The country belonged to a vague pre-history."
- "Psychologists... are mostly bad historians, inventing—as Freud has done—their pre-history to suit their theories."
- "One of the challenges of studying any Jewish custom is that we tend to view it in an anachronistic fashion; we think that what we do today is what was always done. Therefore, in this article we shall describe the pre-history of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, the four basic components of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony before the year 1800 as suggested by Michael Hilton, and six major changes that occurred in modern times."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *préh₂i? Proto-Italic *prai Proto-Italic *prai- Latin prae-lbor. Middle English pre- English pre- Proto-Indo-European *weyd- Proto-Indo-European *-tōr Proto-Indo-European *wéydtōr Proto-Hellenic *wístōr Ancient Greek ῐ̔́στωρ (hĭ́stōr) Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *-eyéti Proto-Indo-European *-esyéti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁ti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁yeti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Ancient Greek -έω (-éō) Ancient Greek ῐ̔στορέω (hĭstoréō) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ Proto-Hellenic *-íā Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā) Ancient Greek ῐ̔στορῐ́ᾱ (hĭstorĭ́ā)bor. Latin historiader. Old French estoire Old French estorie Old French historiebor. Middle English historie English history English prehistory From pre- (“before”) + history, first attested in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836, after the model of prehistoric, from French préhistorique.