avant la lettre

avant la lettre

Before something (a word, phrase, name, or specific entity, especially that which is anachronistic) was coined or created. From the French meaning "before the letter." So-called "hipsters" have always existed avant la lettre, but it's only in the last few decades that we've attempted to create a label for them.
See also: avant, la
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • avant
  • down at the heels
  • down-at-the-heels
  • down-at-heel
  • down at heel
  • down-at-heels
  • down-at-the-heel
  • down at the heel
  • death and taxes, (certain as)
  • IYSWIM
References in periodicals archive
Je refuse de qualifier cette rencontre de finale avant la lettre, on est loin du compte[beaucoup plus grand que], a-t-il souligne.
Belmadi a propos du match Algerie-Senegal : [beaucoup moins que]Important mais pas decisif[beaucoup plus grand que]
But via their meticulous devotion to recording the nuances of unfamiliar lands and people, many of them exhibit a borderless passion that might be called cultural pluralism avant la lettre. Naval surgeon John Linton Palmer's rendering of the body art of an " Easter Islander" suggests more than mere clinical curiosity.
Explorers' Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure
Specialists in agriculture were also sent, and acted as development workers avant la lettre, and to have success they had to cooperate and enter into dialogue with the population.
Marie-Antoinette Willemsen, De lange weg naar Nusa Tenggara. Spanningsvelden in een missiegebied
C'etait le choc, la finale avant la lettre. Mais il n'y a meme pas eu de match.
C1 : Le Bayern Munich fait exploser le FC Barcelone (4-0)
He positions himself aggressively against the reading of Borges as a post-structuralist avant la lettre shuffling disemboweled texts, by insisting that ir Borges's writings are a directed dream, they are a sueno de vida that stages life in/as literature.
La critica del mito: Borges y la literatura como sueno de vida
This may seem simply postmodern avant la lettre, but to label it that would be to mistake Lukacs's point.
Personal history
His sensitivity to the environment prompts Duflo to refer to his 'perspectivek ecologiques avant la lettre' (p.
Etudes de la nature
Giovanni repeatedly and extravagantly professed his no-doubt-genuine devotion to Lorenzo, but--consummate hedge-funder avant la lettre that he was--he also enjoyed a long and close relationship with the Estensi rulers of Ferrara, who in 1475 enrolled him formally into their house.
Giovanni Lanfredini: Uomo d'affari e diplomatico nell'Italia del Quattrocento