come before

1. 1.

   be the predecessor of

   “Bill preceded John in the long line of Susan's husbands”

   Synonymsprecede

Questions about come before

What does come before mean?

come before means "be the predecessor of".

What is another word for come before?

Close synonyms include precede. 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.

Is come before a common word?

come before 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.