Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To mark or designate with a date earlier than the actual one: predated the check.
- v. To precede in time; antedate.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To antedate; date before the actual time: as, to predate a bond.
- To possess an earlier date than; precede in date.
Wiktionary
- v. 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".)
- v. transitive To exist, or to occur before something else; to antedate (the more correct term for this usage.)
- n. A publication, such as a newspaper or magazine, that is issued with a printed date later than the date of issue.
- v. To prey upon something.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To date anticipation; to affix to (a document) an earlier than the actual date; to antedate.
WordNet 3.0
- v. establish something as being earlier relative to something else
- v. prey on or hunt for
- v. come before
- v. be earlier in time; go back further
Etymologies
- From predation, predator (Wiktionary)
Examples
“These early restrictions or economic warfare, to use the Israeli term predate Hamas.”
“A Toys 'R' Us spokesman said today that the cribs in the expanded recall predate those tests.”
Consumer Reports: Jardine recalls an additional 56,450 cribs with defective slats
“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.”
“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.”
“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
“Actually 'predate' (stress on first syllable) does also have the meaning 'to prey upon', in contrast to its antecedent meaning (stress on second syllable).”
“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.”
“These figures predate popular awareness of the Y2K computer glitch, which propelled millions into an awareness of survivalist issues.”
“Oh goodie (NOT!) ... that means the number predate 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina ...”
“On the other hand again, I have met several other CD&V ex-prime ministers (Dehaene, Tindemans, Eyskens) and been impressed by them (though all three predate the party's most recent name change).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘predate’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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It's a date!
date, date palm, dating, save the date, it's a date, radiocarbon dating, uranium-thorium d..., rubidium-strontiu..., date night, date of birth, dateline, double date and 65 more...
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Animals (besides pottos)
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robin, wagtail, frog, bunny, pronk, rabbit, fur, badger, mouse, bee, crepuscular, purr and 140 more...
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Favorites
disparage, partisan, cupidity, hokum, tussle, odious, dastardly, overture, plane, chronic, peering, peer and 328 more...
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Bi-sonics
Allophonic homographs. Words that are pronounced at least 2 ways, having different senses. 'august' and 'polish' are less ambiguous since capitalization make the correct pronunciation clear (at lea...
sow, row, dove, polish, precedent, rewet, lower, read, bass, patent, primer, tear and 102 more...
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InstantWordPower
sesquipedalian, optometrist, quadruped, biped, bimonthly, bifocal, bicuspid, bivalve, quadraphonic, quadruplet, quadruple, quadrilateral and 107 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for predate.
Prolagus 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) Nov 21, 2008