anteverbal

English edit

Etymology edit

ante- +‎ verbal

Adjective edit

anteverbal (not comparable) (rare)

Prior to being verbal (using words).
- 1954, Folio:
  But his poetic mysticism is irreligious; God has become a "drug," a means of provoking the mystical nirvana. The dream state, the mere emptying out of content, is followed by a second, more active one. Out of the "lethal" experience is projected the intoxication immediately preceding the finding of words. While the Ego is suspended in the tranquillity of the dream, an "original vision" (Urgesicht) emerges from it: "In the original vision life is superseded (anteverbal source of instinct), life ..."
- 1960, Gottfried Benn, Primal Vision: Selected Writings, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 37:
  ... beast-shaped, sphinx-pouched features of the primal face. I recalled the dicta of certain profoundly experienced men, that evil would come of their telling all they knew. I thought of the strange adages, that one should give up searching for the ultimate words that need only be spoken to unhinge heaven and earth. I sniffed in masks, I rattled in runes, I dove into demons with sleep-craving brutality, with mythical instincts, in the anteverbal, instinctual threat of prehistoric neura; I began to ...
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:anteverbal.
Preceding a verb.
- 1963, Report of the Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies:
  Among the eleven such relationships within binary tactical phrases are anteverbal (nominal or pronominal material preceding verbal material, and postverbal (nominal or pronominal material following verbal material), and when relationships like the anteverbal and postverbal ...
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:anteverbal.