Meaning & use
antecedent
A thing, event, or condition that came before and often influenced something that followed.
See it in a sentence
Historians traced the antecedents of the revolution back several decades.
In the sentence, the pronoun 'she' refers back to its antecedent, 'Maria'.
A note on using this word
In grammar, an antecedent is the noun a pronoun replaces or refers back to, and it should agree with it in number.
Words with a similar meaning
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Words with an opposite meaning
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