antecedent

1. 1.

   someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

   Synonymsancestorascendantascendentroot

   Broaderrelative

   Narrowerancestressforebearforefatherforemotherprogenitor
2. 2.

   a preceding occurrence or cause or event

   Broadercause
3. 3.

   anything that precedes something similar in time

   “phrenology was an antecedent of modern neuroscience”

   Synonymsforerunner

   Broadertemporal relation
4. 4.

   the referent of an anaphor; a phrase or clause that is referred to by an anaphoric pronoun

   Broaderreferent

1. 1.

   preceding in time or order

   Antonymssubsequent

   Similaranterioranticipatorypreexistent

Other forms of antecedent

plural

antecedents·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about antecedent

What does antecedent mean?

antecedent means "someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in antecedent?

antecedent has 4 syllables: an-tec-e-dent. The stress falls on "tec". In IPA it is /ˌænˈtɛsədənt/.

What is another word for antecedent?

Close synonyms include ancestor, ascendant, ascendent, root, forerunner. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of antecedent?

The recorded antonyms are subsequent.

Is antecedent a common word?

antecedent is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.