Word or phrase for “example earlier than the concept”

Question

Which English word or phrase can be used to express consisely that

a particular thing or occurrence can be seen as an example or instance of a general concept, for which now there is a term,

but at the time this thing existed or the occurrence took place the term was not yet in use or that general concept was not yet recognized

?

A possible example:

According to Wikipedia, Plato was a feminist ______.”

The idea would be to express that the stated views of Plato make him a feminist (at least according to Wikipedia), but that of course neither he nor his contemporaries considered him as such, simply because the concept was introduced much later (namely by Charles Fourier in 1837).

What comes in my mind is something like “before the fact” or “before the term”, but dictionary sites do not support this use. Is there some other phrase?

Answer 1

I don't know of an English term, but the French phrase avant la lettre (literally ‘before the letter’) is used in exactly this sense.

In fact, the example given at Wiktionary is very close to your example:

Suffragettes were feminists avant la lettre. — Suffragettes were feminists before the word "feminist" existed.

A very recent use:

In this context Wilde must be viewed not only as an author and a playwright, but a critic who puts his own artistic theories into practice in his literary work. As far as I know, the idea of Wilde as, in some ways, a postmodernist avant la letter is a way of reading Wilde that has not been examined in Wildean scholarship.
_{— Kees de Vries, ‘Intertextuality and Intermediality in Oscar Wilde’s Salome or: How Oscar Wilde Became a Postmodernist’, in Michael Y. Bennet, ed., Refiguring Oscar Wilde’s Salome, 2011.}

Answer 2

How about the prefix "proto-"? "

According to Wikipedia, Plato was a proto-feminist

Answer 3

How about pioneer, innovator, or precursor? (Or synonyms thereof.) Or an early example in or an early form of?

So something like:

• “The age-old practice of selective breeding could be considered a precursor to genetic engineering.” or "[...] could be considered an early form of genetic engineering.”
• “According to Wikipedia, Plato was a pioneer in feminism.”

Answer 4

The term an observation in need of an explanation is not uncommon, though it is hardly snappy. Neither is it restricted to observations made in the past and subsequently explained by theory, nor indeed to observations made in the past as opposed to the present.

You'd need 'It was ...' or 'It profited from ...'.

If you want to stress the fact that no one had realised that having an overarching theory might be preferable, more art than science might be more to your liking.

Answer 5

NASCENT adjective

(especially of a process or organization) just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential. "the nascent space industry"

synonyms: just beginning, budding, developing, growing, embryonic, incipient, young, fledgling, evolving, emergent, dawning, burgeoning

Google

Answer 6

According to Wikipedia, Plato was an ur-feminist

From OED:

ur- (prefix) denoting ‘primitive, original, earliest,’ as ur-Hamlet, ur-origin, ur-stock, etc.
See also urheimat, urschleim, ursprache, urtext