What does "presocratic" mean?

Any Ancient Greek philosopher who preceded or was roughly contemporaneous with Socrates and whose methods and views were influenced neither directly nor indirectly by Socrates or his primary student, Plato.

What is a synonym for "presocratic"?

Common synonyms include: pre socratic, pre-socratic.

Presocratic

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any Ancient Greek philosopher who preceded or was roughly contemporaneous with Socrates and whose methods and views were influenced neither directly nor indirectly by Socrates or his primary student, Plato.
"The Great Mother is no simple notion from primitive religion, but an idea in a complex mythology that became demythologized and secularized by the Presocratics, but not changed."

Adjective

1
of, or characteristic of, such a philosopher (or these philosophers) as a whole.

Adjective

1
before the time of Socrates wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

pre socratic pre-socratic

Example

More examples

"The Great Mother is no simple notion from primitive religion, but an idea in a complex mythology that became demythologized and secularized by the Presocratics, but not changed."

Etymology

From pre- + Socratic.

Related phrases

ancient greek

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.