pre-discoveryn.adj.

1653 T. Horton Wisdome's Judgm. Folly 10 To shew us them, not in the event,..but afore-hand in the pre-discoveries and apprehensions of it.

1787 J. Hawkins Life Johnson 464 A question between us and..Spain, touching the pre~discovery, and, consequently, the right of dominion over certain islands in the South seas.

1923 Geogr. Jrnl. 62 360 There is not the slightest reason to suppose that Prof. Everett was aware of Murdoch's pre-discovery.

1974 Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald 19 Feb. 5/5 The Norse pre-discovery of America had been firmly established.

2002 Nature 28 Nov. 362/2 Friedmann's ‘prediscovery’ of the Universe's expansion presaged its observational discovery by Edwin Hubble.

1878 Jrnl. Statist. Soc. 41 233 The figures which represent Mr. Jevons's statement of [gold] prices in the fifteen Pre-discovery years 1831–45.

1926 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. Great Brit. & Ireland 56 226 I infer that this region must have been thickly populated in pre-discovery days.

1946 Nature 9 Nov. 648/1 In the nomenclature of the time, these pre-discovery observations of Uranus are known as the ‘ancient’ observations.

2000 R. Hill Sceptres & Sciences in the Spains iv. 203 It is implied that the New World is not new only with respect to its opposing Old World, but also because of the scientific methods that distinguish pre-Discovery and post-Discovery Europe.