former

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun One who forms, fashions, creates, or makes; a creator.
• noun Specifically, a pattern in or upon which anything is shaped, as a piece of wood used for shaping cartridges and gun-wads; any mechanism contributing to give shape to an article in process of manufacture.
• Being before in place; fore; first; foremost.
• Being or happening before in time; preceding another or something else in order of time; prior.
• Past; especially, long past; ancient.
• Preceding or going before in a series; antecedent in order of thought, of action, etc.: specifically applied to the antecedent one of two things, or of two parts or divisions of anything.
• Bygone.
• noun A predecessor.
• noun One of a number of appliances and machines used in bending and shaping sheet-metal into tubes, cylinders, boxes, and other forms.
• noun The templet used for the cutting of gear-teeth; the guide used for giving desired motion to the cutter when forming or cutting irregularly shaped pieces in a profiling-machine.
• noun In electricity, a frame upon which the coils of certain types of armatures and transformers are wound.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adjective Preceding in order of time; antecedent; previous; prior; earlier; hence, ancient; long past.
• adjective Near the beginning; preceeding.
• adjective Earlier, as between two things mentioned together; first mentioned.
• noun One who forms; a maker; a creator.
• noun A shape around which an article is to be shaped, molded, woven wrapped, pasted, or otherwise constructed.
• noun A templet, pattern, or gauge by which an article is shaped.
• noun A cutting die.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Someone who forms something.
• noun An object used to form something.
• noun chiefly UK, used in combinations Someone in, or of, a certain form (class).
• adjective previous
• adjective first of aforementioned two items. Used with the, often without a noun.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the first of two or the first mentioned of two
• adjective (used especially of persons) of the immediate past
• adjective belonging to the distant past
• adjective referring to the first of two things or persons mentioned (or the earlier one or ones of several)
• adjective belonging to some prior time