Preborealadj.n.
/priːˈbɔːrɪəl/, U.S. /priˈbɔriəl/ A. adj.
Designating or relating to the first postglacial climatic stage in northern Europe (about 10,000 to 9,000 years ago), following the younger Dryas and preceding the Boreal stage and marked by a retreat of the tundra and the spread of birch and pine forests.
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the world > the earth > structure of the earth > age or period > [adjective] > quaternary > glacial or boreal
preglacial1855
boreal1876
sub-Atlantic1876
sub-boreal1876
Preboreal1924
Atlantic1935
1924 Jrnl. Linn. Soc.: Bot. 46 497 (caption) Pollen-spectra... Holland (S.W. Sweden) (preboreal spectrum).
1956 A. L. Armstrong in D. L. Linton Sheffield vi. 101 The known [Mesolithic] moorland sites are usually upon patches of old land surface..or in the eroded banks of streams and cloughs, where their pre-Boreal age is testified by remains of the Pennine forest lying in the peat above them.
1991 Nature 17 Oct. 648/2 During the first two centuries of the Preboreal period, the 13C curve shifts to values of about -22.5‰.
B. n.
With the. The Preboreal climatic stage.
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1929 Bot. Gaz. 87 562 Similar methods..show this last interglacial epoch to have been similar to the postglacial, in having periods corresponding to the preboreal, boreal, atlantic, and sub-boreal with similar vegetation.
1976 Sci. Amer. Feb. 94/2 Sometime between 8300 and 8000 b.c. the cold Late Dryas period was superseded by a warmer period known as the Preboreal.
2002 Quaternary Internat. 91 2/2 This mechanism is well exemplified at several stages during the Holocene, for example in the dramatic warming at the end of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of the Preboreal.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2007; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.n.1924