Link Centre Dictionary

antediluvian

an·te·di·luvian

UK/ˌæn.tɪ.dɪˈluː.vɪ.ən/ US/ˌæn.ti.dəˈlu.vi.ən/ uncommon
adjective (2) noun (2)

adjective

1.

of or relating to the period before the Biblical flood

  • “Antediluvian man”
Synonyms
2.

so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period

  • “a ramshackle antediluvian tenement”
  • “antediluvian ideas”
  • “archaic laws”
Synonyms
Similar

noun

1.

any of the early patriarchs who lived prior to the Noachian deluge

Synonyms
2.

a very old (or old fashioned) person

Origin

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.

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Pertaining to

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.