Alternative forms
edit
Etymology
edit
From pre- (“before”) + history, first attested in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836,[1] after the model of prehistoric, from French préhistorique.
prehistory (countable and uncountable, plural prehistories)
- The time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times.
- Synonym: prehistoric age
- The study of those times.
- (humorous, hyperbolic) Any past time (even recent) treated as such a distant, unknowable era.
1984, Shiva Naipaul, Beyond the Dragon's Mouth, page 25:I was a town boy through and through. The country belonged to a vague pre-history.
- (often as pre-history) The history leading up to some event, condition, etc.
1931 July 25, Time & Tide, page 893:Psychologists... are mostly bad historians, inventing—as Freud has done—their pre-history to suit their theories.
Antonyms
edit
Related terms
edit
Translations
edit
era before written records
study of events and conditions before written records
- Armenian: նախապատմություն (hy) (naxapatmutʿyun)
- Asturian: prehistoria f
- Catalan: prehistòria (ca) f
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: 史前史 (zh) (shǐqiánshǐ)
- Czech: pravěk (cs) m
- Danish: forhistorie
- Dutch: prehistorie (nl) f
- Esperanto: prahistorio (eo)
- Finnish: esihistoria (fi)
- French: préhistoire (fr) f
- Galician: prehistoria (gl) f
- Georgian: პრეისტორია (ṗreisṭoria), წინარეისტორია (c̣inareisṭoria)
- German: Vorgeschichte (de) f, Urgeschichte (de) f
- Italian: preistoria (it) f
- Japanese: 先史学 (せんしがく, senshigaku)
- Korean: 선사학(先史學) (seonsahak)
- Kurdish:
- Northern Kurdish: pêşdîrok (ku) f
- Macedonian: праисторија f (praistorija)
- Malay: prasejarah (ms)
- Jawi: ڤراسجاره (ms)
- Norman: préhistouaithe f
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål: forhistorie m or f
- Nynorsk: forhistorie f
- Polish: prehistoria (pl) f
- Portuguese: pré-história (pt) f
- Russian: праисто́рия (ru) f (praistórija), преисто́рия (ru) f (preistórija), доисто́рия (ru) f (doistórija)
- Serbo-Croatian:
- Roman: prethistorija (sh) f, prahistorija (sh) f, pretpovijest (sh) f, prapovijest (sh) f, prehistorija f
- Slovak: pravek m
- Slovene: prazgodovina (sl) f
- Spanish: prehistoria (es) f
- Swedish: förhistoria (sv) c
- Turkish: prehistorya (tr), tarih öncesi (tr)
- Ukrainian: передісто́рія f (peredistórija)
- Vietnamese: thời tiền sử
- Volapük: rujenav
|
history of events leaving up to something
References
edit
- ^ Eddy, Matthew Daniel (2011) “The Prehistoric Mind as a Historical Artefact”, in Notes and Records of the Royal Society[1], volume 65, →DOI, pages 1–8
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2007.