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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
predate
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Many economic systems predate capitalism.
▪ Stone knives predate bows and arrows.
▪ The steam engine predates the internal combustion engine by at least 100 years.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A strong concern about physical appearance seems to predate the development of anorexia nervosa.
▪ At first, they rolled tires from crucible steel, a method predating Bessemer and the other recent innovations.
▪ Corning is a very old technique for preserving meats, predating commercial refrigeration.
▪ Rather these are mental health problems which predate the onset of later life.
▪ The adhesion function of IgSF members is believed to predate their role in antigen recognition.
▪ The major part of these changes predate 1981.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Predate

Predate \Pre*date"\, v. t. To date anticipation; to affix to (a document) an earlier than the actual date; to antedate; as, a predated deed or letter.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
predate

"to seek prey," 1974, a back-formation from predator, etc. Related: Predated; predating. For the word meaning "antedate; pre-exist," see pre-date.

Wiktionary
predate

Etymology 1 n. A publication, such as a newspaper or magazine, that is issued with a printed date later than the date of issue. vb. 1 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".) 2 (context transitive English) To exist, or to occur before something else; to antedate (the more correct term for this usage.) Etymology 2

vb. To prey upon something.

WordNet
predate
  1. v. be earlier in time; go back further; "Stone tools precede bronze tools" [syn: precede, forego, antecede, antedate] [ant: postdate]

  2. come before; "Most English adjectives precede the noun they modify" [syn: precede]

  3. prey on or hunt for; "These mammals predate certain eggs" [syn: raven, prey]

  4. establish something as being earlier relative to something else [syn: antedate, foredate] [ant: postdate]

Usage examples of "predate".

Her recent experiments had shown they were far more primitive than anyone realized, throwbacks that predated even the narrow-leaved mono cot grasses.

Since their residency on Selva predates that of the colonists, they cannot be removed from the planet without their consent, according to regulation 3144.

It predated all else, its severe architecture throughly alien and strangely unwelcoming.

Dekhron reminded Alucius of Hieron, because the causeway clearly predated much of the trade section close to the river, and ramps and inclined roads had been built later to connect to the eternastone surface.

The Lupercalian festival was an ancient fertility rite whose origins are lost in antiquity and probably predate civilization.

When the ashes blew away, they saw that which had not been seen in 10,000 years, predating both Tiahuanaco and Giza, according to the time wizards.

From hospitals, resistant superbugs travel to old-age homes and day-care centers, predating on the old and the very young.

If they found conclusive evidence that chiral asymmetry predated life on Earth, it would be a landmark achievement in exobiology, since so far the chiral nature of organic compounds on Earth was a sure signature of life.

Jim Gaither acted with coolness and dispatch to protect us, by providing us with official journalists, documents predated to 1939, accrediting us to Life magazzine, which has in fact published a couple of.

One_ postdated Dada and predated Surrealism, thereby providing a one-man bridge between the two major art movements of this century.

Although the rise of this crime wave long predated crack, the trend was so exacerbated by crack that criminologists got downright apocalyptic in their predictions.

My Notebooks told me about actuarial tables, devices for predicting death rates, that even predated human spaceflight.

Subsection Forty-Two specifically provided for wartime trials of individuals for alleged violation of local laws (in this case the Peeps' own UCC, since Hell had been sovereign territory of the People's Republic of Haven at the time) predating their capture, but prohibited ex post facto trials under the municipal law of whoever captured them.

It was impossible to judge their record on these ancient bursts, predating even flesher gamma-ray astronomy, but if it turned out that they'd correctly anticipated the time of Lac G-1's collision, they'd have shown themselves to be extraordinarily trustworthy forecasters.

The arks preserve such fragmentary codes as have been recovered from human specimens thousands of years old, from Terran genepools predating the development of genebanks in the 20th century, from the last pre-mixing genepools of the motherworld, and from remains both animal and human preserved through centuries of natural freezing and other circumstances which have preserved some internal cellular structure.