Word.ws English Dictionary

antecedently

antecedently adverb: at an earlier time.

Adverb

antecedently (comparative more antecedently, superlative most antecedently)

  1. At an earlier time.
    • The History of Brute and the Brutans setteth forth. Principally and antecedently their persons, & in them sheweth the geneallogy or issue which they had, artes which they studied, actes which they did.1593, Richard Harvey, Philadelphus, London: John Wolfe
    • […] it does not at all appear, that all Mixtures must be of Elementary Bodies; but it seems farr more probable, that there are divers sorts of compound Bodies, even in regard of all or some of their Ingredients, consider’d Antecedently to their Mixture.1661, Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist, Part 4, pp. 214-215

Examples of antecedently in a sentence

  • […] nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and […] all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind;1739, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, London: John Noon, Volume 1, Part 2, Section 6, p. 123:
  • She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any objection to having him for a husband.1896, Thomas Hardy, “An Imaginative Woman”, in Wessex Tales, New York: Harper, page 4:
  • The case of envy just described is one in which we feel joy or sadness at the sadness or joy of one we antecedently hate.2008, Michael Della Rocca, chapter 4, in Spinoza, London: Routledge, page 161:

Synonyms of antecedently

Antonyms

Forms of antecedently

comparativemore antecedently
superlativemost antecedently
alternative formantecedentally

Origin of antecedently

From antecedent + -ly.

Questions about antecedently

What does antecedently mean?
Antecedently means at an earlier time.
How do you use antecedently in a sentence?
[…] nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and […] all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind;
What part of speech is antecedently?
Antecedently is an adverb.

Words near antecedently in the dictionary

  1. antecedency
  2. antecedent
  3. antecedent phrase
  4. antecedent phrases
  5. antecedental
  6. antecedently
  7. antecedents
  8. antecedes
  9. anteceding
  10. antecession
  11. antecessor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: antecedently (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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