How to Use preindustrial in a Sentence

preindustrial

adjective
  • The show opens with a film of a preindustrial construction site.
    — Curbed, 17 Feb. 2022
  • The planet was on track to warm by well over two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
    — Arunabha Ghosh, Foreign Affairs, 20 June 2023
  • So a heat wave was 10 times more probable on this warming planet than in preindustrial times.
    — Michael Calore, WIRED, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Twenty years later, the survivors are eking out a preindustrial life amid the ruins.
    — James Poniewozik, New York Times, 15 Dec. 2021
  • The products of the preindustrial tradition and its modern revival set British cheese apart from those made elsewhere.
    — Charlotte Druckman, WSJ, 6 Aug. 2021
  • The lawn next to the university’s basilica became a preindustrial work site.
    — Douglas Starr, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2022
  • The world has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit since preindustrial time, so this is really about a few tenths of a degree more.
    — Compiled Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, Arkansas Online, 15 Nov. 2021
  • Global temperatures are already a little more than one degree C warmer now than in preindustrial times.
    — Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Cajal, who grew up in the preindustrial countryside, saw in the nervous system the natural images of his childhood.
    — Benjamin Ehrlich, Scientific American, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Ali was born Virginia Rollins in 1933, and in many ways, her formative years were preindustrial.
    — Tim Carman, Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2024
  • That’s the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, comparing this year’s measurements to the preindustrial era, according to a new report.
    — Heather Souvaine Horn, The New Republic, 9 June 2023
  • That day was the first that the average air temperature near the surface of the Earth was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels.
    — Zoë Schlanger, The Atlantic, 20 Nov. 2023
  • Average temperatures for the next two months would have to nearly match temperatures in the preindustrial period for this year not to be the warmest on record, the climate service said.
    — John Bacon, USA TODAY, 12 Nov. 2024
  • And with the increase in global average temperatures now more than 2 degrees over preindustrial times, research has shown that the increase in water vapor is leading to more extreme downpours in many parts of the world.
    — Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Researchers found that if the world reaches 2°C above preindustrial temperatures, more than a quarter of the global population could experience an extra month of severe heat stress each year.
    — Simmone Shah, Time, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Already, human activity has caused the global average temperature to rise 1 °C above preindustrial levels.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 8 Oct. 2018
  • The idea that ordinary people could expect anything different—let alone genuine comfort or opportunity—would sound fantastical to our preindustrial ancestors.
    — Veronique De Rugy, Oc Register, 25 Dec. 2025
  • Temperature increase is measured relative to preindustrial average.
    — Evan Bush, NBC news, 14 Jan. 2026
  • As with all preindustrial societies, European society was fundamentally a rural, peasant society.
    — Literary Hub, 25 Mar. 2026
  • The Paris Agreement is built around temperature increases compared with an unspecified preindustrial baseline, generally taken as the latter half of the 19th century.
    — Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 22 Nov. 2025
  • Their findings show that during the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were roughly four times higher than preindustrial levels.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 5 Aug. 2025
  • This chart shows the change in average annual global temperatures when compared to the average temperature of the preindustrial period, 1850-1900.
    — Evan Bush, NBC news, 14 Jan. 2026
  • The relatively stagnant population and the preponderance of people living and working in subsistence agriculture meant that the desperately poor preindustrial world was also one of relative economic equality between societies.
    — Literary Hub, 25 Mar. 2026
  • The study shows that hydrogen levels surged about 70 percent from preindustrial times to the early 2000s, briefly stabilized, and then began rising again around 2010, largely driven by human activity.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 17 Dec. 2025
  • Last year’s global average temperature was the third warmest since the preindustrial era, according to new data released Tuesday by scientists at Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
    — Harry Stevens, New York Times, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a climate superpollutant, responsible for one-third of the rise in global temperatures since preindustrial times, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
    — Alex Cuadros, ProPublica, 1 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'preindustrial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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