predecessor
Pluralpredecessors
- 1Someone who held a state, position, or office before the person who later took it over.
The incoming senator inherited several stalled bills from her predecessor.
Unlike his predecessors, the new coach favored a defensive style of play.
Similarancestor
Oppositesuccessor
Note
The word was built for offices: prae- 'before' plus Latin dēcessor, a 'retiring officer', from dēcēdō, 'I retire, I die', the verb that also gives English decease. Dickens's David Copperfield plays on that double edge, with a narrator thinking of a predecessor who died of drink and smoke. Its partner is successor. Ancestor implies descent, but predecessor implies taking over someone's place.
- 2An earlier, now-outdated model of machinery or a device that came before the current version.
Reviewers praised the camera for fixing the autofocus issues that plagued its predecessor.
The latest tractor hauls heavier loads than any of its predecessors.
Similarforerunner, precursor, antecedent
Oppositesuccessor
Note
Machines inherit the office-holder's word: a new model takes over from an old one the way a new official replaces the earlier holder of a post. The word almost always comes with a possessive and a comparison, as in its predecessor or its immediate predecessors. Railway Magazine in 1944 describes a locomotive that, like its immediate predecessors, carries no nameplate.
- 3In graph theory, a vertex from which a directed path leads to another given vertex.
In a directed graph, any vertex with a path leading to the target is a predecessor of it.
The algorithm records each predecessor of a node before it begins processing that node.
Oppositesuccessor
Note
Graph theory keeps the everyday idea of coming before but makes it depend strictly on direction: what matters is which way the arrows run. A vertex u is a predecessor of v whenever some directed path leads from u to v, however many edges it crosses. When a single edge does the job, the stricter term is immediate predecessor.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English predecessour, from Old French predecesseor ('forebear'), from Late Latin praedēcessor. This came from Latin prae- ('pre-') plus dēcessor ('retiring officer'), which derived from dēcēdō ('I retire, I die'): the same root as English 'decease.'