How to spell prehistoric

hear itpre·his·tor·ic/,prihɪ'stɔrɪk/adjectivePrefixes and work

What it means: Relating to times before recorded history.

In a sentence: Dinosaurs lived in prehistoric times.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as prehistorick or prehistorec.

Same family: history, historical, prehistory, prehistorian, prehistorically. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Prehistoric comes from the prefix "pre-" meaning "before" and the word "historic," which comes from Greek via Latin and French. The term literally means "before history" and began to be widely used in the 1800s when scientists started studying human life before written records.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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