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protoliterate. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
From proto- + literate.
Adjective
protoliterate (not comparable)
- (of a culture) With written language that is in its early stages.
1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 131:Knowledge of a "fact" and its institutionalization in a society are quite distinct: murder, for example, was probably "discovered" in the Pliocene, but the institutionalization of murder in warfare does not seem to have occurred until the late Neolithic or the protoliterate period.
- (of a person) In the early stages of learning to read and write.
Derived terms
See also