Word.ws English Dictionary

terminus ante quem

terminus ante quem noun: the date before which an event in the past must have occurred: the date before which a document must have been written, the date before which an archaeological artifact must have been deposited, and so on.

Noun

terminus ante quem

  1. The date before which an event in the past must have occurred: the date before which a document must have been written, the date before which an archaeological artifact must have been deposited, and so on.

Antonyms of terminus ante quem

Origin of terminus ante quem

From the Latin terminus (“boundary, limit”) and ante (“before”) and quem (“which”), the accusative of quī (“what”). Literally meaning "the limit before which".

Questions about terminus ante quem

What does terminus ante quem mean?
Terminus ante quem means the date before which an event in the past must have occurred: the date before which a document must have been written, the date before which an archaeological artifact must have been deposited, and so on.
What part of speech is terminus ante quem?
Terminus ante quem is a noun.

Words near terminus ante quem in the dictionary

  1. terminotics
  2. Terminous
  3. terminus
  4. terminus a quo
  5. terminus ad quem
  6. terminus ante quem
  7. terminus post quem
  8. terminus technicus
  9. terminuses
  10. termital
  11. termitaphidid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: terminus ante quem (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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