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
-
Possible causes of senior suicide include social isolation, loss of personal freedom due to illness and fear of being a burden, according to the National Council On Aging.
-
Those causes carried timeless moral weight that outlasted Gandhi’s assassination and Mandela’s nearly three decades of imprisonment.
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.
-
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.
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.
-
Some count ratings or awards as determinants of quality, while count changes to policy and laws or special commissions of inquiry.
Noun
-
Goodhouse recalled stories his grandfather would tell him of their ancestors who were in the Hunkpapa camp when troops attacked.
-
These findings suggest that throughout great ape evolution, our ancestors gradually developed more control over the timing of their vocalizations, including laughter.
Noun
-
Essentially, this transition marks the point where our cells are set up with the precursors required for organ formation, one of the most critical events in human development.
-
Earth-impacting shrapnel from those primordial upheavals may have helped seed our planet with the precursors for life, delivering water and organic compounds from the dark, icy depths of the outer solar system.
Noun
-
Today’s new cars and trucks are many times more sophisticated than their predecessors just a few decades ago.
-
The many new elements are deeper and much more exciting than their predecessors.
Cite this Entry
“Antecedents.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/antecedents. Accessed 30 Jun. 2026.
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