antediluvian

1. 1.

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

   Synonymsantediluvian patriarch

   Broaderpatriarch
2. 2.

   a very old person

   Synonymsancient

   Broaderoldster

1. 1.

   of or relating to the period before the biblical flood

   “antediluvian man”

   Synonymsantediluvial
2. 2.

   so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period

   “a ramshackle antediluvian tenement”

   “antediluvian ideas”

   “archaic laws”

   Synonymsantiquatedarchaic

   Similarold

Other forms of antediluvian

plural

antediluvians·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about antediluvian

What does antediluvian mean?

antediluvian means "any of the early patriarchs who lived prior to the Noachian deluge". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in antediluvian?

antediluvian has 6 syllables: an-te-di-lu-vi-an. The stress falls on "vi".

What is another word for antediluvian?

Close synonyms include antediluvian patriarch, ancient, antediluvial, antiquated, archaic. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is antediluvian a common word?

antediluvian is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.