antecedent

The antecedent of the opinion’s only masculine pronoun is a hypothetical “biological male who identifies as male,” and the hypothetical counterpart who “identifies as female” gets no pronoun.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Arm in arm with this, and less discussed, is the death of deductive logic, the ability to understand cause and effect by composing simple conditional arguments with an antecedent and a consequent.

From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2025

They found that physical frailty can be an indicator of future social isolation over time and that loneliness may be both an antecedent and an outcome of frailty.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 14, 2024

Maybe the closest antecedent is a new, $85 million HUD program called “Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing,” or PRO Housing, which this summer issued 17 grants of a few million dollars each.

From Slate ● Sep. 24, 2024

If something has happened, then so must its antecedent have done: if a man has forgotten something, it follows that he knew it in the first place.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith

While going rather easy on King George, Ms. Worsley is dismayed by the strategy of her antecedents, whose tactics often seemed calculated to fan the sputtering flames of rebellion.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 2, 2026

“If I do something that shocks me or that I’m not proud of, I’m able to frame that behaviorally and sort of understand the antecedents, the behavior itself and then the consequence,” she said.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 1, 2023

After all, machines that could play decent games of chess did not appear until the antecedents of IBM's Deep Blue in the late 20th century.

From Salon ● May 30, 2023

None of the possible antecedents are reproduced exactly.

From New York Times ● Apr. 2, 2023

The convoluted syntax, multiple negatives, indefinite antecedents, and masterful circumlocutions of this statement defy comprehension.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis