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
US reservations about the court predate the Trump.
From Barron's ● Jul. 13, 2026
Much of these findings predate the energy shock in 2022, and attribute the hit to uncertainty in the first years after Brexit.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2026
Because they predate written records of their use and were not known to exist until after the date of the Mary Rose’s sinking, the navigational instruments that were excavated are also extremely important.
From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler
But the relationship between the two countries "long predates the acquisition of Manchester City and has developed across diplomacy, commerce, education, and security," said Thani.
From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 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
I don’t feel I’m being disloyal to Ben, only loyal to something else; which predates him, which has nothing to do with him.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
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
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
Waller said core inflation—which excludes volatile food and energy prices—has risen from 3% in December to 3.4% in May, and said the increase predated the Iran war’s energy shock.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
The cocktail that broke the internet predated the release of his foray into food TV: “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.”
From Salon ● Jun. 3, 2026
Games, books, old news programs that predated the sun flares.
From "The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Book Four; Origin)" by James Dashner
“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
Moreover, there was an even more elemental understanding implicitly codified in Philadelphia but actually predating the Constitutional Convention by many years.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
Definitions 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.
