antediluvian
Meanings
- Belonging or pertaining to, or existing in, the time prior to the great flood described in Genesis, or (by extension) to a great or destructive flood or deluge described in other mythologies.
- Of animals and plants: long extinct; prehistoric.
- Of a person or thing: very old; ancient.
- Of attitudes, ideas, etc.: extremely old-fashioned, especially to a laughable extent; antiquated.
- A person who lived in the time prior to the great flood described in Genesis, especially one of the biblical patriarchs.
- A very old person.
- A person with extremely old-fashioned attitudes, ideas, etc., especially to a laughable extent; a fogey or old fogey.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
PIE word *dwís From ante- (prefix meaning ‘prior to in time’) + Latin dīluvium (“a flood”) + -an (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives; and forming agent nouns), referring the story of Noah’s Ark, through which God rescues Noah, his family, and examples of all the world’s animals from the great flood, which is related in Genesis 6–9 of the Bible. Dīluvium is derived from dīluō (“to wash away”) (from dis- (prefix meaning ‘apart, asunder, in two’) + lavō (“to wash”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewh₃- (“to wash”))) + -ium (suffix forming abstract nouns). The English word is analyzable as ante- + diluvian. Adjective sense 2 (“long extinct”) is from the fact that such animals and plants were originally believed to have perished in the biblical flood referred to above.