1
as in causes
someone or something responsible for a result
what are the antecedents of the American Revolutionary War?
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in forerunners
something belonging to an earlier time from which something else was later developed
the typewriter is the antecedent of the computer keyboard
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of antecedents
Her model suggests that antecedents, physiological state and consequences continuously influence one another, with behavior emerging as the result of that interaction.
—
Matthew Kayser, USA Today, 2 June 2026
After millennia of antecedents, this latest trend of trying to enlist God into warfare didn’t start in America, of course.
—Andreas Kluth, Twin Cities, 3 Apr. 2026
Many musical and social antecedents are responsible for its birth.
—Literary Hub, 17 Feb. 2026
Went on to tackle malaria, and that process created both huge successes in modern public health, but also seeded the American public health system county by county across this country, and presented the antecedents of the Centers for Disease Control based in Atlanta.
—Christopher Dilella, CNBC, 17 Feb. 2026
The goal was to link American culture with its European antecedents—a heady way to justify shedding blood for another continent’s conflict.
—Colton Valentine, New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2026
For Ann Lee, an arthouse musical that counts among its closest antecedents Robert Eggers’ The Witch and the Björk-starring Dancer in the Dark, Blumberg reworked and retrofitted 10 traditional Shaker hymns, and recorded Seyfried and the other actors live on set.
—Walden Green, Pitchfork, 22 Jan. 2026
My poem works by multisequencing; in each of the three book-sections there are four narratives, and the reader must gather each piece of the narrative as it unspools and connect it to its antecedents—that yields compression.
—Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books, 23 Oct. 2025
Seeing around the bend in the river—or even knowing the river ahead does indeed bend—can require the sort of leap of faith that made Vannevar Bush insist that shamans, priests and spiritual seers are the antecedents of today’s engineering stars.
—IEEE Spectrum, 8 Aug. 2019
Matthew Kayser, USA Today, 2 June 2026
After millennia of antecedents, this latest trend of trying to enlist God into warfare didn’t start in America, of course.
—Andreas Kluth, Twin Cities, 3 Apr. 2026
Many musical and social antecedents are responsible for its birth.
—Literary Hub, 17 Feb. 2026
Went on to tackle malaria, and that process created both huge successes in modern public health, but also seeded the American public health system county by county across this country, and presented the antecedents of the Centers for Disease Control based in Atlanta.
—Christopher Dilella, CNBC, 17 Feb. 2026
The goal was to link American culture with its European antecedents—a heady way to justify shedding blood for another continent’s conflict.
—Colton Valentine, New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2026
For Ann Lee, an arthouse musical that counts among its closest antecedents Robert Eggers’ The Witch and the Björk-starring Dancer in the Dark, Blumberg reworked and retrofitted 10 traditional Shaker hymns, and recorded Seyfried and the other actors live on set.
—Walden Green, Pitchfork, 22 Jan. 2026
My poem works by multisequencing; in each of the three book-sections there are four narratives, and the reader must gather each piece of the narrative as it unspools and connect it to its antecedents—that yields compression.
—Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books, 23 Oct. 2025
Seeing around the bend in the river—or even knowing the river ahead does indeed bend—can require the sort of leap of faith that made Vannevar Bush insist that shamans, priests and spiritual seers are the antecedents of today’s engineering stars.
—IEEE Spectrum, 8 Aug. 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for antecedents
Noun
-
Coroner Martine Lachance has been assigned to investigate the causes and circumstances surrounding the death.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
3 June 2026
-
Los Angeles’ music industry, in recent years, has generally supported progressive causes.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
3 June 2026
Noun
-
Even the Hammurabi Code, a set of laws created by the sixth Babylonian king in approximately 1760 bce, established forerunners of today’s interest rate and minimum wage laws.—
Chris Roush,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
22 Apr. 2026
-
The Norwegian ended his season before the Olympics to further recover from a shoulder injury, but attended the finals as one of the forerunners, who test a course shortly before a race starts.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
22 Mar. 2026
Noun
-
In my own research on Ebola, SARS and MERS, my colleagues and I have shown that the speed at which infected people are identified and removed from the community is one of the strongest determinants of outbreak size.—
John Drake,
Forbes.com,
17 May 2026
-
Some count ratings or awards as determinants of quality, while count changes to policy and laws or special commissions of inquiry.—
Encyclopedia Britannica,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
1 May 2026
Noun
-
Velociraptors and microraptors were not birds, but they were closely related to ancestors of the earliest birds, such as Archaeopteryx.—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN Money,
4 June 2026
-
The behavior may be inherited from wild ancestors Why dogs like grass in the first place is harder to answer.—
Niranjana Rajalakshmi,
Popular Science,
4 June 2026
Noun
-
Many scientists believe that the vocal systems of great apes were too limited to be considered precursors of human language, but the work of Crockford, Berthet and their colleagues suggests otherwise.—
Katie Hunt,
CNN Money,
3 June 2026
-
These foods don’t have sky-high amounts of melatonin, and some contain more precursors to melatonin than the hormone itself, Tahir says.—
Sarah Klein,
Time,
28 May 2026
Noun
-
Naval Combat Demolition Units and others are the predecessors of the Navy SEALs, possibly best known for the mission in 2011 that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.—
USA TODAY Network,
USA Today,
10 June 2026
-
During their mission, the crew will spend around two weeks inside their Orion capsule—about four days more than their predecessors did in April’s Artemis II mission, a nearly 10-day voyage that took four other astronauts looping around the moon’s farside.—
Claire Cameron,
Scientific American,
9 June 2026
Cite this Entry
“Antecedents.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/antecedents. Accessed 10 Jun. 2026.
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