antecedent: Meaning and Definition of

an•te•ced•ent

1. preceding; prior: an antecedent event.

1. a preceding circumstance, event, object, style, phenomenon, etc.
2. Little is known about his birth and antecedents.
1. ancestors.
2. the history, events, characteristics, etc., of one's earlier life:Little is known about his birth and antecedents.
3. 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.
1. the first term of a ratio; the first or third term of a proportion.
2. the first of two vectors in a dyad.
5. the conditional element in a proposition, as “Caesar conquered Gaul,” in “If Caesar conquered Gaul, he was a great general.”