MEANING
1. Exist or happen before another event, object, or period.
2. Hunt, kill, or feed on another animal as prey.
3. Assign a date earlier than the actual creation or occurrence of something.
Use it for
establishing the temporal order of two developments; questioning an explanation whose cause occurs too late; distinguishing prior existence from later influenceEstablishes earlier occurrence without implying influence, and separately records an ecological use. Academic functions: Change / Pattern / Trend, Causation / Relationships.
Words that belong together
- predate the reform
- predate the evidence
- predate the introduction of
On the page
The letters predate the policy change, weakening the claim that the change produced the attitudes they express.
Several narrative conventions predate the invention commonly credited with creating them.
The ecological review asks whether the introduced animals predate local birds or compete with them for food.
The comparison distinguishes species that predate eggs from those that damage nesting sites.
The archivist notes that the letter was predated, so its written date cannot establish the meeting’s timing by itself.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- predate
- Past tense
- predated
- Past participle
- predated
- Present participle
- predating
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- predate
- Present continuous
- am/is/are predating
- Present perfect
- have/has predated
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been predating
- Past
- predated
- Past continuous
- was/were predating
- Past perfect
- had predated
- Past perfect continuous
- had been predating
- Future
- will predate
- Future continuous
- will be predating
- Future perfect
- will have predated
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been predating
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Verb. Third-person predates; simple past and past participle predated; present participle predating. Chronological sense is transitive; prey sense can be transitive or intransitive. Pre-date is a spelling/hyphenation variant, not another entry. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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