Antediluvian (pronounced an-tee-di-loo-vee-uhn)
(1) In biblical scholarship, of or belonging to
the period before the biblical flood of Noah (Genesis chapters 6-9); a person
who lived before the biblical flood.
(2) In figurative use, anything or anyone very
old, old-fashioned, or out of date, antiquated, primitive, outdated, outmoded,
ancient, archaic, antique, superannuated, anachronistic, outworn, behind the
times, medieval, quaint, old-fangled, obsolescent, obsolete, prehistoric,
passé, fossilized.
1640-1650: From the Latin ante- (before; preposition
and prefix) + dīluvium
(flood). The Latin ante- is derived from the primitive Indo-European hénti, locative singular of the root
noun hent- (front, front side). It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἀντί (antí) (opposite, facing), the Sanskrit अन्ति (ánti), the Old Armenian ընդ (ənd),
the Tocharian Bānte and the English and.
The word was coined by English physician Sir Thomas Browne
(1605-1682).
Handy adjective: politicians and others
Though sometimes casually treated as such, prehistoric and antediluvian are not synonyms. Prehistoric has a precise (though culturally and geographically variable) meaning. It means before history was written down, hence before writing which emerged some five millennia ago in Mesopotamia. Historians note the pivot has to be the creation of writing with some historic meaning and that earlier (usually financial) records don’t fulfil this criterion. Representational forms predated writing, most famously as cave paintings, but these, while helpful in the interpretation of the archaeological record, don’t impart meaning in the same way as text.
Antediluvian
(before the flood) is a word from biblical scholarship. It refers to time prior to the biblical flood
of Noah but also to the notion of a monumental flood preserved in the folklore
of a remarkable number of cultures although there is nothing in the geological
record to suggest there was ever a global flood in the sense of the Old
Testament writings. Although usually
used figuratively, for biblical-literalists (many of them south of the
Mason-Dixon line), antediluvian means the actual time before the flood
described in chapters 6–9 in the Book of
Genesis. The literalists invented
their own field of study called diluvial
geology (also labelled flood or creation geology) and regard the text in
Genesis 6–9 as a scientific record; they date the great flood to within the
last five thousand years. The term is
used also in the field of Assyriology for kings, according to the Sumerian king
list, those supposed to have reigned before the great flood.
As a pejorative adjective, antediluvian is sometimes used figuratively although the choice is not always most appropriate. Ancient is probably better to describe something old or antiquated if so old as to lack functionality; Methuselan is a most attractive adjective to apply to old folk. Antediluvian is best reserved to describe the archaic or outdated views and opinions held by people, regardless of their age.
