antecedent
preceding; prior: an antecedent event.
a preceding circumstance, event, object, style, phenomenon, etc.
antecedents,
the history, events, characteristics, etc., of one's earlier life: Little is known about his birth and antecedents.
Grammar. a word, phrase, or clause, usually a substantive, that is replaced by a pronoun or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier, in the same or in another, usually subsequent, sentence. In Jane lost a glove and she can't find it, Jane is the antecedent of she and glove is the antecedent of it.
Mathematics.
the first term of a ratio; the first or third term of a proportion.
the first of two vectors in a dyad.
Logic. the conditional element in a proposition, as “Caesar conquered Gaul,” in “If Caesar conquered Gaul, he was a great general.”
Origin of antecedent
1Other words for antecedent
Opposites for antecedent
Other words from antecedent
- an·te·ce·den·tal [an-tuh-see-den-tl], /ˌæn tə siˈdɛn tl/, adjective
- an·te·ced·ent·ly, adverb
Words that may be confused with antecedent
- antecedence, antecedents
Words Nearby antecedent
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use antecedent in a sentence
If dinosaurs in museums are chimeras, their prehistoric antecedents are unobservable entities.
How Tycoons Created the Dinosaur - Issue 107: The Edge | Lukas Rieppel | October 20, 2021 | NautilusI know that American history is rife with that kind of historical antecedent, in the past it has worked itself out, and the pendulum has swung the other way.
'It Moved Me to Tears.' William Shatner On Briefly Going Where Some Men Have Gone Before | Jeffrey Kluger | October 14, 2021 | TimePowers’s thoroughly modern fable of environmental mourning hardly needs to dredge up that cringeworthy antecedent.
Fresh off a Pulitzer win for ‘The Overstory,’ Richard Powers delivers another environmental ode | Ron Charles | September 21, 2021 | Washington PostI’ve lived hereabout all my life but, for most of that time, it would be fair to say that I’ve never concerned myself with the tribulations of long-dead antecedents.
Much like the blood-drinking, Satan-worshipping, pedophilic cabal of QAnon’s theories, the Prokopian antecedent demonstrates a mixing of political critique with the supernatural and the erotic.
What the QAnon of the 6th Century Teaches Us About Conspiracies | Roland Betancourt | February 3, 2021 | Time
Even online chat rooms have an antecedent in the exchanges of nineteenth-century American telegraph operators.
If the riots have any comparable antecedent, it's the violence that took over French towns and cities in the fall of 2005.
The nature both of this substance and the antecedent substance from which it is derived is not known.
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis | James Campbell ToddSpencer tells us that it is 'absolutely antecedent to all relative experience whatever.'
Ancestors | Gertrude AthertonIn this line and the next the attributive clauses are separated from the antecedent: see note, l. 2.
Milton's Comus | John MiltonLaw and antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same.
The Contemporary Review, January 1883 | VariousTo a scientist there is nothing more in it than antecedent and consequent.
Theism or Atheism | Chapman Cohen
British Dictionary definitions for antecedent
/ (ˌæntɪˈsiːdənt) /
an event, circumstance, etc, that happens before another
grammar a word or phrase to which a pronoun refers. In the sentence "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," people is the antecedent of who
logic the hypothetical clause, usually introduced by "if", in a conditional statement: that which implies the other
maths an obsolescent name for numerator (def. 1)
denying the antecedent logic the fallacy of inferring the falsehood of the consequent of a conditional statement, given the truth of the conditional and the falsehood of its antecedent, as if there are five of them, there are more than four: there are not five, so there are not more than four
preceding in time or order; prior
- See also antecedents
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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