Prehuman

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. An organism or creature that existed before or was ancestral to modern humans, or relating to the period or conditions that preceded human existence
2. A being that lived prior to the emergence of contemporary humans or pertaining to the era preceding human development
3. A species that existed before modern humans or associated with the time immediately before human existence

Etymology: Prehuman is a plain formation: the Latin prefix "prae-", meaning "before", attached to "human." The prefix reached English through Middle English "pre-", which had come in from Latin, so the word is a straightforward compound of two elements that were each already in use for centuries before they were put together. The base word has a longer road behind it. "Human" traces back to Latin "hūmānus," which passed through Old French "humain" and Middle French "humain" before arriving in Middle English as "humayne." Its ultimate roots lie in the Latin noun "homo," meaning "human being," the same stem that gives English words such as "homage" and "homicide" in other forms. Because "prehuman" is built on the ordinary word "human" rather than borrowed whole, it can be read at a glance: whatever comes before humanity, whether a creature or a stretch of time, is prehuman. The word's meaning therefore follows the sense of its parts without any surprising shift.

Synonyms: predecessor, protohuman, hominid, ancient human, predecessor species