preliterate
1
9.3
- adjective
- /ˌpriːˈlɪtərət/
- Specialized
- Anthropologists often find that preliterate cultures rely heavily on oral traditions to convey their history.
- preliterate people
- preliterate society
- preliterate culture
Examples
-
Rather, among preliterate peoples, myths represent a search for meaning, for order, and for a total understanding of a universe beset with disorder.
Academic text (1990) -
Many traits of art and ritual can still be observed in cultures that remain preliterate today.
-
What had been founded as of 1910 were reservation communities that still maintained the values of a preliterate culture.
Academic text (2010) -
This practice reveals to him what a peaceful and happy civilization the preliterate Maltese enjoyed.
Academic text (1993) -
I've spent significant time with the nonliterate remnant of a preliterate society.
Blog text (32) -
This corporate guide to interpretation was not populist; in a preliterate society, the leadership of the church interpreted the text on behalf of the broader group, but not necessarily in conversation with it.
Academic text (1994) -
Although in a non-technical sense, myth connotes the normative sense of untruth, lies, and simplistic affirmation of an unreality, in more technical usage it refers to a traditional story told by members of a preliterate society.
Academic text (1991) -
When we speak of literature in a context like this, we must always be understood to signify the oral antecedents of written language—"literature" as it is practiced by peoples who are preliterate but who nonetheless have rich traditions of oral narrative.
Academic text (2002) -
The researchers studied customs still practiced by peoples in a preliterate society where storytelling was the primary way to pass down knowledge.
Synonyms
1
8.2
A group of people with no way to write things down
1
9.1
Existing before people learned to write
How Literate
1
2.7
- Specialized
1
9.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Preliterate breaks into pre- meaning 'before' and literate from a word for 'letter', as in 'letter' or 'literature'. So a preliterate society is one that existed before a system of writing and had no written records.