Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as precedence.

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

  • noun Precedence; superiority.
  • noun obsolete The fact of serving as a precedent.

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

  • noun the act of preceding in time or order or rank (as in a ceremony)
  • noun preceding in time
  • noun status established in order of importance or urgency

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From precedent +‎ -ency.

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Examples

  • How ready was Paul to acknowledge in others any kind of precedency!

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation) 1721

  • Obama has hardly any political experience prior to his precedency.

    McCain to vote against Sotomayor 2009

  • Mrs. Berlinton, though she felt no resentment against Camilla for the desertion she had occasioned her, felt much surprize; not to be first was new to her: and whoever, in any station of life, any class of society, has had regular and acknowledged precedency, must own a sudden descent to be rather aukward.

    Camilla 2008

  • To quote the great Dr Johnson: "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea"

    The Audacity of Complete Crap 2008

  • Thou knowest that on this occasion it is one of these Counts, or western Franks, who undertakes the combat; and the Varangians, who call these people their enemies, have some reason to claim a precedency in guarding the lists, which it might not at this moment be convenient to dispute with them.

    Count Robert of Paris 2008

  • But we being in this world beset with sundry uneasinesses, distracted with different desires, the next inquiry naturally will be, — Which of them has the precedency in determining the will to the next action? and to that the answer is, — That ordinarily which is the most pressing of those that are judged capable of being then removed.

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

  • But of faith, and the precedency it ought to have before other arguments of persuasion, I shall speak more hereafter; where I treat of it as it is ordinarily placed, in contradistinction to reason; though in truth it be nothing else but an assent founded on the highest reason.

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

  • These here mentioned, being the effects of sensation, are only from some affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so depend on something exterior to the mind; no otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the precedency of time.

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

  • Scarce two gentlemen dwell together in the country, (if they be not near kin or linked in marriage) but there is emulation betwixt them and their servants, some quarrel or some grudge betwixt their wives or children, friends and followers, some contention about wealth, gentry, precedency, &c., by means of which, like the frog in

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • We see the common quarrelings, that are ordinary with us, for taking of the wall, precedency, and the like, which though toys in themselves, and things of no moment, yet they cause many distempers, much heart-burning amongst us.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

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