predate
Americanverb
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to affix a date to (a document, paper, etc) that is earlier than the actual date
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to assign a date to (an event, period, etc) that is earlier than the actual or previously assigned date of occurrence
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to be or occur at an earlier date than; precede in time
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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predatesimple
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predatessimple
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have predatedperfect
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has predatedperfect
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am predatingprogressive
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are predatingprogressive
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is predatingprogressive
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have been predatingperfect progressive
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has been predatingperfect progressive
Past
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predatedsimple
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had predatedperfect
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was predatingprogressive
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were predatingprogressive
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had been predatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of predate
Explanation
To predate is to happen or exist before something else. If you move into a house that already has a ghost, the ghost predates you. Boo! If your interest in soul music predates your sister's, you loved it first. When you use predate this way, you can read it as a combination of pre-, "before," and date, "point in time." Another meaning of this verb is "to prey on for food," so you could say that your cat predates the mice that live in your kitchen. This definition stems from predator, from the Latin praedator, "plunderer."
Vocabulary lists containing predate
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But many such laws predate modern prediction markets and haven’t necessarily been tested in court recently.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
Their experiments suggest that the attraction to crystals may have deep evolutionary origins that predate modern humans.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
“In our view, the key to the current policy stance in Norway is that inflation concerns predate this spring’s energy price volatility,” ING foreign exchange strategist Francesco Pesole said in a note.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
He has two pensions because they predate the merger of SAG, the film actors' union, and AFTRA, for television actors, in 2012.
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026
Had the king had them carved when he built the clock tower, or did they predate it?
From "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas
Yet if human folly predates the decline of reading, the atrophy of this splendid activity is no less lamentable.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
The problem predates recent federal cuts challenging higher education, he said, emphasizing a decline in public trust in universities and affirming that USC is well placed to address it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026
We don’t know for sure, but they may have arrived at this choice using logic that predates you.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
Moral outrage at the behaviour of young people is nothing new and predates the invention of e-bikes by a considerable margin.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
Use of the word “upset” in this sense predates that race.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Mandeep Singh, a senior industry analyst for technology at Bloomberg Intelligence, said worries about destructive AI predated large language models like Anthropic’s Claude.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
She predated our overheated era of cable-news slapfights as a massive star and national treasure who never took herself too seriously.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026
The company is also staring down lawsuits from people and school districts that predated the settlement and are set to go to trial soon, the Times reports.
From Slate ● Aug. 26, 2026
As I reported in 2019, many of those arrangements turned out to be exaggerated or bogus, or predated Trump’s claim.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
The creditor’s note was purportedly signed by Roan and was dated “Jany, 1921”; this was important, because it indicated that the note predated efforts to obtain the insurance, giving legitimacy to Hale’s claim.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
“Notably lacking” were “educational philosophies predating the 20th century, or much focus on the elements and principles of classical liberal arts education.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
The play, which takes place in the period predating smartphones, offers a microcosm of American life, not unlike the Grover’s Corners of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” before our brains were all rewired.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
It lost $2 billion in 2001, with the vast majority of its problems predating the Sept. 11 attacks.
From Slate ● Nov. 24, 2025
Survey response rates have dramatically declined External link in recent years, predating the Covid-19 pandemic.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2025
Most importantly, alongside seas and rivers rich in seafood and waterfowl, humans set up permanent fishing villages—the first permanent settlements in history, long predating the Agricultural Revolution.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
