pre-adamite, n. and a.
(priːˈædəmaɪt)
Also without hyphen, and with capital A.
[ad. mod.L. praeadamīta (whence also F. préadamite): see pre- B. 1, Adam1, -ite1.]
A. n.
1. One who lived (or one of a race held to have existed) before the time of Adam.
An appellation given by Isaac de la Peyrère in his Præadamitæ, 1655, to a race of men, the progenitors of the Gentile peoples, supposed by him to have existed long before Adam, whom he held to be the first parent of the Jews and their kindred only.
| 1662 Stillingfl Orig. Sacr. iii. iv. §2 If the report given of things in Scripture bee true, the hypothesis of Præ-Adamites is undoubtedly false. 1775 Adair Amer. Ind. 11 The wild notion which some have espoused of the North American Indians being Prae-Adamites, or a separate race of men. 1879 tr. De Quatrefage's Hum. Spec. 31 The descendants of these Preadamites were identical with the Gentiles. |
† 2. A believer in the existence of men before Adam. Obs.
| 1710 Steele Tatler No. 256 ¶4 Mr. Bickerstaff..finding Reasons, by some Expressions which the Welshman let fall in asserting the Antiquity of his family, to suspect that the said Welshman was a Præ-adamite. 1768–74 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 468 St. John had nothing of the preadamite belonging to him. |
¶ 3. ? erron. for Adamite n.1 2.
| 1709 Steele Tatler No. 69 ¶7 Dancing without Clothes on, after the manner of the Præ-Adamites. 1710 Steele & Addison Tatler No. 257 ¶12 There were written on the Foreheads of these dead Men several hard Words, as Præ-Adamites, Sabbatarians, Camaronians, Muggletonians. |
4. N.Z. An inhabitant of Canterbury Province before the settlement of 1850.
| 1930 L. G. D. Acland Early Canterbury Runs 1st Ser. i. 3 The old ‘Pre-Adamites’..were those who had bought land from the New Zealand Company and settled here before the Canterbury settlers arrived. 1949 A. H. Reed Story of Canterbury iii. 55 To the Hays and Sinclairs and other ‘pre-Adamites’—as those few who had arrived before the ‘Pilgrims’ came jocularly to be called—these ships represented shops, schools, churches, roads and other amenities of which they had for so long been deprived. 1977 N.Z. Herald 8 Jan. 1–6/6 Any reader whose antecedents were among these ‘Pre-Adamites’, as they are called, is invited to send their names..to [address given]. |
B. adj.
1. That existed before Adam; belonging to the time previous to that of Adam; prehuman.
| 1786 tr. Beckford's Vathek (1883) 142 Upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the fleshless forms of the Preadamite Kings, who had been monarchs of the whole earth. 1836 Lane Mod. Egypt. I. x. 283 The Ginn are said to be of præ-adamite origin, an intermediate class of beings between angels and men. 1851 Richardson Geol. (1855) 271 The bones of the Mastodon and Megatherium—those terrestrial giants of the pre-Adamite earth. 1877 Dawson Orig. World xv. 356 Our knowledge of pre-Adamite and present nature. 1916 Nature 25 May 259/2 For imitation, a pre-Adamite simian character, plays no small part in the ostensible development, mental, moral, and otherwise, of gregarious folk. |
2. Relating to the time, or to a race, previous to Adam; belonging to the Pre-adamites (sense A. 2).
| 1882 Ogilvie, Preadamite, a...2. Pertaining to the Pre-adamites: as the preadamite theory. |
Hence pre-adaˈmitic, -ical adjs. = pre-adamite B. 1; pre-ˈadamitism, the doctrine of the existence of pre-adamite man.
| 1716 Gentleman Instr. ii. (ed. 6) 414 Upon what Memorials do you ground the Story of your Præ-adamitical Transactions? 1790 Monthly Rev. III. 543 The author adds a vindication of himself from an accusation of Pre-adamitism;..he insists on it, that, provided he excepts the human species, he may believe rational animals to have existed on the earth before Adam, without being guilty of this terrible heresy. 1799 Kirwan Geol. Ess. 127 These, however, have been by some, ascribed to some fictitious Preadamitick periods. 1865 Card. Wiseman in Ess. Relig. & Lit. Ser. i. 26 How many human skeletons have been announced as found in preadamitic positions! Yet not one has yet been admitted as proved. 1880 A. Winchell Preadamites p. iii, The central idea of the work is human preadamitism. |