Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To mark or designate with a date earlier than the actual one.
- transitive verb To precede in time; antedate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To antedate; date before the actual time: as, to
predate a bond. - To possess an earlier date than; precede in date.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To date anticipation; to affix to (a document) an earlier than the actual date; to antedate.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
prey upon something. - verb To designate a
date earlier than the actual one; to move a date, appointment, event, or period of time to an earlier point (contrast "postdate".) - verb transitive To exist, or to occur before something else; to
antedate (the more correct term for this usage.) - noun A
publication , such as anewspaper ormagazine , that isissued with aprinted date later than the date of issue.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb establish something as being earlier relative to something else
- verb prey on or hunt for
- verb come before
- verb be earlier in time; go back further
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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These early restrictions or economic warfare, to use the Israeli term predate Hamas.
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Mya Guarnieri 2011
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A Toys 'R' Us spokesman said today that the cribs in the expanded recall predate those tests.
Jardine recalls an additional 56,450 cribs with defective slats 2009
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A Toys 'R' Us spokesman said today that the cribs in the expanded recall predate those tests.
Jardine recalls an additional 56,450 cribs with defective slats 2009
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Harry Lee sent this in an e-mail: I have seen this abuse of 'predate' and cringed for a few years running but never from the pen of a senior scientist a presumption or in a first-tier journal.
This just in: authors prey on careless copy editor! AYDIN 2007
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In this case, it seems that any candidate will have to exist on two mutually exclusive planes: be a book that has stood the test of time and thrilled readers for generations, and also magically been published in the current publishing climate so that it does not "predate" what you define of the genre.
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Speaking as a child of the late 70’s, I have to know, did that term predate the Batman-wannabe cartoon character, or derive from it?
Olbermann spanked for making faces at Beck? - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState 2009
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Actually 'predate' (stress on first syllable) does also have the meaning 'to prey upon', in contrast to its antecedent meaning (stress on second syllable).
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While it has absorbed a good many words from Latin daughter languages, especially Spanish, its presence in Europe may predate the spread of Indo-European into this area.
The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010
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While it has absorbed a good many words from Latin daughter languages, especially Spanish, its presence in Europe may predate the spread of Indo-European into this area.
The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010
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These figures predate popular awareness of the Y2K computer glitch, which propelled millions into an awareness of survivalist issues.
Apollo's Daughter :: Utopia and Distopia apollosdtr 2009
Prolagus commented on the word predate
For years, conservationists have been concerned about the impact of invasive plant species in the Galápagos Islands. Hundreds of species have been identified as being nonnative, introduced through human contact. The idea is to remove these plants to help keep the archipelago ecologically pristine.
That’s a worthy goal. But there’s just one problem, according to a study in Science: some of these pariah plants turn out to be native after all. They predate humans in the Galápagos by thousands of years.
(The New York Times, Invasive Plants in Galápagos May Really Be Native, by Henry Fountain, November 20, 2008)
November 21, 2008
jboyd commented on the word predate
Beware the ambiguity between the more common and the science-ese senses.
July 20, 2019