Adamite

Definitions

  • Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
    • Adamite A descendant of Adam; a human being.
    • Adamite (Eccl. Hist) One of a sect of visionaries, who, professing to imitate the state of Adam, discarded the use of dress in their assemblies.
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
    • n adamite One of mankind; one of the human race considered as descended from Adam.
    • n adamite One of that section of mankind more particularly regarded as the offspring of Adam, in contradistinction to a supposed older race, called Preadamites.
    • n adamite One of a sect which originated in the north of Africa in the second century, and pretended to have attained to the primitive innocence of Adam. Its members accordingly rejected marriage as an effect and clothing as a sign of sin, and appeared in their assemblies, called paradises, naked. This heresy reappeared in the fourteenth century, in Savoy, and again in the fifteenth century among the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, in Germany, Bohemia, and Moravia. It was suppressed in 1421 on account of the crimes and immoralities of its votaries. (See Picard and Picardist.) When toleration was proclaimed by Joseph II., in 1781, the sect revived, but was promptly proscribed. Its latest appearance was during the insurrection of 1848–9.
    • n adamite A mineral occurring in small yellow or green crystals and in mammillary groups; a hydrous arseniate of zinc, isomorphous with olivenite: found in Chili, and also at Laurium in Greece. Also called adamine.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
    • n Adamite one descended from Adam: one of a 2d-century heretical sect in Northern Africa, and in the 15th in Germany, whose members, claiming the primitive innocence of Eden, went about naked
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Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
From Adam,

Usage

In literature:

One might almost fancy himself among the tombs of the pre-Adamites.
"The Adventures of Captain Bonneville Digested From His Journal" by Washington Irving
Next in folly came the Adamites, so called because, in shameless wise, they dressed like Adam and Eve before the fall.
"History of the Moravian Church" by J. E. Hutton
It is the call of the wild to which the pre-Adamite monkey in our nature responds.
"In Africa" by John T. McCutcheon
This has a pre-Adamite sound in modern ears.
"France and the Republic" by William Henry Hurlbert
No food and lodgings shall be allowed a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic.
"Diary in America, Series One" by Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
To hear an Adamite speak riddles to me.
"The Works of Lord Byron" by Lord Byron
The air is like that of a pre-Adamite ironing-day in full blast.
"The Letters of Charles Dickens" by Charles Dickens
The rhinoceros, like the aboriginal native of the Congo, has come straight down from pre-Adamite days almost without change.
"The Pools of Silence" by H. de Vere Stacpoole
Five-sixths of the public are taught this Adamitic Monogenism as if it were an established truth, and believe it.
"Bible Romances" by George W. Foote
As he stood before that pre-Adamite stone man, I got one good, long look at his face.
"Phemie Frost's Experiences" by Ann S. Stephens
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