a. and sb. [f. ANTE- + diluvi-um the deluge + -AN.] A. adj.
1. Of or belonging to the world before the Noachian deluge; existing before the Flood.
1657. Trapp, Comm. Job xxii. 15, II. 200. Those Antediluvian Belialists.
1748. Hartley, Observ. Man, I. iii. § 1 ¶ 83. Parts of the antediluvian Language.
1821. W. Craig, Drawing, etc. ii. 109. The ingenious Dr. Burnet … has made the antediluvian world a beautiful, smooth sphere, entirely covered with fine rich pasture land.
2. Concerning or referring to the period before the Flood.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 344. The antediluvian Chronology.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, Ess., II. 299. The antediluvian and postdiluvian history.
3. Of the sort which obtained before the Flood.
1698. Norris, Pract. Disc., IV. 367. Could I then lengthen out my Span to an Antediluvian stretch.
1711. F. Fuller, Med. Gymn., Pref. An Antediluvian Diet of Roots and Vegetables.
1846. H. Rogers, Ess., I. iv. 165. An antediluvian lease of life.
4. Belonging or proper to long past ages; very antiquated, primitive. (In a disparaging sense.)
a. 1726. Vanbrugh & Cib., Prov. Husb., III. (1730), 334. Such primitive antediluvian notions of life.
1823. Lamb, Elia, Ser. I. xxiv. (1865), 188. The coltage, a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building.
B. sb. [the adj. used absol.]
1. One who lived before the Flood; fig. one who attains to a very great age.
1684. T. Burnet, Th. Earth, I. 222. The long lives of the antediluvians.
1713. Guardian, No. 101 (1756), II. 81. An antediluvian could not have more life and briskness in him at threescore and ten.
1823. Scott, St. Ronan’s, xxxi. From what cursed old antediluvian, who lived before the invention of spinning-jennies, she learned this craft, Heaven only knows.
