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preceding

adjective

Simple meaning

Occurring before or in front of something else, in time, place, rank or sequence.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

preeseeding

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

pɹiˈsidɪŋ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Occurring before or in front of something else, in time, place, rank or sequence.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Occurring before or in front of something else, in time, place, rank or sequence.

Used this way, preceding is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use preceding

  • “On the preceding Monday Shobana had gone on vacation.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Occurring

immediately precedingpreceding yearpreceding day

Other combinations

preceding chapterpreceding sectionpreceding paragraphpreceding discussionpreceding example

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • precedeverbBase word

    Be earlier in time.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • precedencenounDerived noun · specialist

    Status established in order of importance or urgency.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: occurring before or in front of something else

Antonyms

Sense: occurring before or in front of something else

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.