avant la lettre
- idiom
- /ɑːˈvɑːnt lə ˈlɛtər/
- Formal
:
avant la lettre
- The author's novel is regarded as avant la lettre for its themes of social justice, which were not widely recognized until decades later.
Examples
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The literary reputation of a "woman" poet was made, or culturally constructed, avant la lettre.
Academic text (2000) -
A number of scholars have made the point that as a textile artist and teacher, Taeuber was making abstract art avant-la-lettre.
Academic text (2014) -
Through the new theorization of "border zones" and the work of cultural translation, the Osogbo project appeared as a postcolonial project avant la lettre.
Academic text (2009) -
As John Hittinger has noted, Kolnai was a critic avant la lettre of contemporary liberalism's celebration of the unencumbered self.
Academic text (2001) -
If only partially, however, these cinematic tendencies are also anti-globalization movements avant la lettre, seeking to resist Western cultural, economic, and political hegemony.
Academic text (2009) -
The centrality of the apocalypse narrative makes it tempting to read The Purple Cloud thematically as a novel of the Anthropocene avant la lettre.
Academic text (2016) -
In its myriad forms—philosophical, political, economic, and social—liberalism met opposition throughout the 19th century, resulting in a sort of antimodernism avant la lettre.
Academic text (2010) -
Until then, my only guides had been my hunches and the scintillating example of Marcel Duchamp, that master of the martial art of irony and sociologist of culture avant la lettre.
Academic text (2002) -
Many of the ideas explored in the exhibit were considered avant la lettre, anticipating movements that would later dominate the art world.
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Her approach to environmental conservation was avant la lettre, as she advocated sustainability long before it became a mainstream concept.
Synonyms
17
7.4
Having ideas or work more modern than most people of the time
To do or like something before it becomes popular
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
avant + la + lettre
This is a French loan phrase whose literal constituents (‘avant’ = before, ‘la’ = the, ‘lettre’ = letter) do not transparently yield the idiomatic sense ‘ahead of its time’ or ‘before the concept was named’. Even if a learner knows the individual words, the expression’s idiomatic, language-specific usage must be learned, so its meaning is not predictable from the parts.
Etymology
Avant la lettre comes from French and literally means 'before the lettre', giving an image of something happening before people had a name for it. That's why we use it to say someone or something was 'ahead of its time'.