Sample sentences for ANTECEDENT

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Definition

something that happened previous to something else; or anything that precedes something

More rarely and more specifically, antecedent can take on these specialized meanings:

Grammar:  a word or phrase that precedes a pronoun and to which the pronoun refers. In She is the best at math in her grade, the pronoun her refers to the antecedent she.

Logic:  a condition in a hypothetical proposition such as If all people are moral, then you are mortal.

Genealogy:  All of someone's ancestors.

For less common examples, including one in math, see a comprehensive dictionary.

Surges in debt are a recurring antecedent to U.S. banking crises.

antecedent = something that precedes something else

Student motivation as an antecedent to accelerated education.

antecedent = something that necessarily precedes something else

He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true.
F. Scott Fitzgerald -- The Great Gatsby

antecedents = past actions

At a period immeasurably antecedent to the silurian epoch...
Charles Darwin -- The Origin of Species
For any one war seemed so rooted in its antecedents.
T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
'My only response is that I'm entirely too kind and experienced to speculate on your antecedents.
Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
Your pronoun needs an antecedent, don't you see," he would say, very primly.
Russell Baker -- Growing Up
Or if the traditional birth image is remembered, nothing is said of an antecedent marriage.
Joseph Campbell -- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
At these passionate interjections, mere incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised of the antecedents, the Surgeon was profoundly discomposed.
Herman Melville -- Billy Budd
In his Foundations of Science Poincaré explained that the antecedents of the crisis in the foundations of science were very old.
Robert M. Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Nothing peculiar about her family antecedents, is there?
Kate Chopin -- The Awakening
It was the first time it had ever been so complemented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better.
Charles Dickens -- A Tale of Two Cities
But I ought to understand how limited the possibilities of a firm like his were to hire a boy of my antecedents.
Malcolm Gladwell -- Outliers
Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently seen better days.
Thomas Hardy -- Far from the Madding Crowd
Begin it early, and do it well; and there is no antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that will tell against us with the Almighty, or with ourselves.'
Charles Dickens -- Little Dorrit
Let us put it down to his deplorable antecedents and education, if you wish.
E.M. Forster -- A Room With A View
Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations were against me; that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do.
Henry James -- The American
These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers
I wish you to marry a young man with other antecedents—a young man who could give positive guarantees.
Henry James -- Washington Square
Steve had been a teacher of Afrikaans, and he not only spoke perfect Afrikaans but its antecedent, High Dutch.
Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom

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