prehistoric

«prehistoric» in Mova's school dictionary: from the very long time before people wrote things down… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

adjective

meaning for a pupil

1) Prehistoric means from the very long time before people wrote things down, so before written history began. tree →

2) (informal, humorous) Prehistoric can also mean very old-fashioned or out of date. tree →

sense in the lessons

In history and science lessons, prehistoric times include the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, and prehistoric animals include dinosaurs and woolly mammoths. We learn about prehistoric people from cave paintings, bones and tools, not from books. As a joke, children call an old phone or computer "prehistoric".

examples

• Stonehenge was built in prehistoric times. tree →
• Prehistoric people painted animals on cave walls. tree →
• Dinosaurs were prehistoric reptiles. tree →
• We found a prehistoric flint tool in the museum. tree →
• Woolly mammoths were prehistoric animals that lived in the Ice Age. tree →
• (humorous) Dad's phone is prehistoric — it can't even take photos! tree →
• Archaeologists dig up prehistoric bones to learn how people lived. tree →

note

"Pre-" means before, so prehistoric = before history (writing). Myth trap: cavemen and dinosaurs did NOT live at the same time; dinosaurs died out about 66 million years before the first humans. Prehistory ended at different times in different places.

In the corpora

• pre- means before (preview, prehistoric); sub- means under (submarine, subway).

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «prehistoric» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.