antedate

American  

[an-ti-deyt, an-ti-deyt, an-ti-deyt] / ˈæn tɪˌdeɪt, ˌæn tɪˈdeɪt, ˈæn tɪˌdeɪt /

verb (used with object)

antedated, antedating

1. to be of older date than; precede in time.

   The Peruvian empire antedates the Mexican empire.

2. predate.

3. to assign to an earlier date.

   to antedate a historical event.

4. to cause to return to an earlier time.

   to antedate one's thoughts by remembering past events.

5. to cause to happen sooner; accelerate.

   The cold weather antedated their departure from the country.

6. Archaic. to take or have in advance; anticipate.

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noun

1. a prior date.

antedate British  

verb

1. to be or occur at an earlier date than

2. to affix a date to (a document, etc) that is earlier than the actual date

3. to assign a date to (an event, etc) that is earlier than its previously assigned date

4. to cause to occur sooner

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noun

1. an earlier date

Etymology

Origin of antedate

1570–80; earlier antidate < Middle French antidater, derivative of antidate a date earlier than the true date (by association with anté- ante- ), originally a date put in place of another date; ante-, date ¹

Explanation

When things antedate something else, they come before it, or happen earlier than it does. World War I antedates World War II. Another way to say antedate is precede or predate. It's common to find the word antedate when people talk about history, for obvious reasons. Papyrus antedates modern paper, and paper antedates the desktop computer, which antedates the smartphone and tablet. Your parents' birth antedates your own, and your great-grandparents' lives antedate both yours and your parents'. In Latin, the prefix ante means "before."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

antedate antedated antedating

This selection, which includes several cartoons that antedate the age of Trump, showcases several modes.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2017

These stones antedate even the long-ago, medieval world in which this “Macbeth” is set.

From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2014

Robert Hooke, not long after, suggested that the fossil record would form the basis for a chronology that would “far antedate ... even the very pyramids.”

From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2013

His juggled compositions antedate John Cage by a generation.

From Time Magazine Archive

But among these South Sea Islands are prehistoric ruins and monuments which are believed to antedate the Sphinx.

From Under the Southern Cross or Travels in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, and Other Pacific Islands by Ballou, Maturin Murray

The thought that a 17-game regular season was too long will someday seem as quaint and antedated as the Christmas Eve playoff matchups of the mid-1970s.

From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2022

“The Negro church may be said to have antedated the Negro family on American soil,” wrote the early 20th-century scholar W.E.B.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 27, 2021

Indeed, they appear to represent an evolutionary branching that far antedated the common ancestor of all true bacteria.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 1, 2013

Swift, of course, antedated Edmund Burke, whose conception of "great objects and terrible" gave birth to the Romantic notions of the psychologised sublime.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 27, 2010

The breech-loading mechanism antedated the cartridge by many years, the earliest breech-loading hand guns dating back to 1537.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 6 "Groups, Theory of" to "Gwyniad" by Various

Hardly a day goes by on ADS-L, the email discussion list of the American Dialect Society, without someone reporting an antedating of some word or another.

From Time ● Jul. 6, 2015

I always think of them as mysteriously antedating London itself, and having been plonked down there for two long millenniums while the concrete and clay built up around them.

From New York Times ● Nov. 28, 2012

It is one of the oldest books in the world, antedating the New Testament a couple of centuries, quite as old as Aesop's Fables, which it much resembles.

From Time Magazine Archive

Internationalist, Graft, Third Termer, Million Dollar Candidate, many another symbol or shibboleth antedating March 4, 1933, rang through the hot campaign air.

From Time Magazine Archive

The system is evidently an ancient one, long antedating the immunologic sensing of familiar or foreign forms of life by the antibodies on which we now depend so heavily for our separateness.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas