protoliterate

English

Alternative forms

• proto-literate

Etymology

proto- +‎ literate

Adjective

protoliterate (not comparable)

1. (of a culture) With written language that is in its early stages.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 131:

     Knowledge of a "fact" and its institutionalization in a society are quite distinct: murder, for example, was probably "discovered" in the Pliocene, but the institutionalization of murder in warfare does not seem to have occurred until the late Neolithic or the protoliterate period.

2. (of a person) In the early stages of learning to read and write.

Derived terms

• Protoliterate period
  • Protoliterate

Related terms

• protoliteracy

See also

• preliterate