antecedent

Even online chat rooms have an antecedent in the exchanges of nineteenth-century American telegraph operators.

If the riots have any comparable antecedent, it's the violence that took over French towns and cities in the fall of 2005.

The nature both of this substance and the antecedent substance from which it is derived is not known.

Spencer tells us that it is 'absolutely antecedent to all relative experience whatever.'

In this line and the next the attributive clauses are separated from the antecedent: see note, l. 2.

Law and antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same.

To a scientist there is nothing more in it than antecedent and consequent.