antecedent
/ˌæntɪˈsiːdənt/
antecedent means earlier, either in time or in order. It carries an Arena rating of 1605, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, antecedent ranks #618 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #3,025 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #4,371 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #4,539 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
antecedent is pronounced /ˌæntɪˈsiːdənt/.
Why “antecedent” is a great word
That which precedes, whether an event in a chain of causation or a grammatical referent for a pronoun. It arrives from the Middle English via Old French, born of the Latin antecēdēns, "going before," from ante ("before") and cēdere ("to go"), first stepping into the record in the fourteenth century. Unlike "consequent" (which denotes what follows logically) or "precedent" (which serves as a justificatory example), "antecedent" simply and neutrally marks what came before—the unspoken father in the phrase "he said," the lightning before the thunder, or the childhood event that quietly scripts the adult's fear. It is the ghost of order in the relentless sequence of time.
Etymology
From Middle English antecedent, borrowed from Old French antecedent, from Latin antecēdēns (“going before”), from antecēdō (“to precede; excel; surpass”).
adj
- Earlier, either in time or in order.e.g.“an antecedent cause”
- Presumptive.e.g.“an antecedent improbability”
noun
- Any thing that precedes another thing, especially the cause of the second thing.
- An ancestor.e.g.“The Boston agent added that this clerk was a young man of wholly unquestioned veracity and reliability, of known antecedents and long with the company.” — 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 3, in The Whisperer in Darkness:
- A word, phrase or clause referred to by a pronoun or other pro-form.e.g.“[W]hereas it might seem orderly that, as who is appropriated to persons, so that should have been appropriated to things […] the antecedent of that is often personal” — 1926, H. W. Fowler, “that rel. pron.”, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, reprint of the first edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 634, column 2:
- The conditional part of a hypothetical proposition, i.e. p→q, where p is the antecedent, and q is the consequent.
- The first of two subsets of a sequent, consisting of all the sequent's formulae which are valuated as true.
- The first term of a ratio, i.e. the term a in the ratio a:b, the other being the consequent.
- Previous principles, conduct, history, etc.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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