Neolithic
adj, name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A person who lived during the New Stone Age.
"For the Neolithics, the stone was flint, and it's still impressive to see what they were able to achieve with it."
- 1 Of or relating to the New Stone Age. not-comparable
"Tokens are first identified at around the same time as the local peoples changed from a life based on hunting and gathering to one based on agriculture. The tokens, as Schmandt-Besserat says, "were part and parcel of the Neolithic phenomenon; that is, the so-called agricultural revolution." (Before Writing 41)."
- 2 Alternative spelling of Neolithic. alt-of, alternative
"With this thought in his mind, Challenger gave a contemptuous and condescending consent to the proposal that he should grace with his presence a proceeding which was, in his opinion, more fitted to the stone cabin of a neolithic savage than to the serious attention of one who represented the accumulated culture and wisdom of the human race."
- 3 hopelessly outdated informal
"What am I supposed to do with this neolithic piece of machinery?"
- 1 of or relating to the most recent period of the Stone Age (following the mesolithic) wordnet
- 1 The period of prehistory from circa 8500 to 4500 BCE.
"Holonyms: Stone Age < prehistory"
Example
More examples"Göbekli Tepe is a neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey."
Etymology
From neo- + -lithic. Coined by English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.
Related phrases
More for "neolithic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.