Preceders

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. One who comes before another in time or place, such as an ancestor or earlier version
2. a term or element preceding another in a sequence or order
3. an entity that influences or lays the groundwork for what follows subsequent to its occurrence

Etymology: "Preceders" is the plural of "preceder," a noun meaning one who comes before. The word is formed from "precede" with the agent suffix "-er," which English attached to verbs to name the doer of an action. The verb "precede" came into English from Latin "praecedere," meaning "to go before," built from "prae" ("before") and "cedere" ("to go"). The suffix has a longer ancestry than the verb it sits on. The "-er" ending traces back through Middle English "-er" and Old French "-ier" to Latin "-arius," a suffix that marked a person connected with something, and it passed into Germanic languages as well. In Old English the equivalent ending was "-ere," so English has been forming agent nouns this way for well over a thousand years, long before "precede" arrived to receive it.

Synonyms: forerunners, antecedents