different between act vs antecedence

English

Etymology

From Middle English acte, from Old French acte, from Latin ?cta (“register of events”), plural of ?ctum (“decree, law”), from ag? (“put in motion”). Compare German Akte (“file”). Partially displaced deed, from Old English d?d (“act, deed”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ækt/
• (AAVE) IPA^(key): /æk/
• Rhymes: -ækt

Noun

act (countable and uncountable, plural acts)

1. (countable) Something done, a deed.
   • 1798, William Wordsworth, Lines

     That best portion of a good man's life, / His little, nameless, unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love.

2. (obsolete, uncountable) Actuality.
   • 1594, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

     The seeds of plants are not at first in act, but in possibility, what they afterward grow to be.

3. (theology) Something done once and for all, as distinguished from a work.
4. (countable) A product of a legislative body, a statute.
5. The process of doing something.

6. (countable) A formal or official record of something done.
7. (countable, drama) A division of a theatrical performance.

8. (countable) A performer or performers in a show.

9. (countable) Any organized activity.
10. (countable) A display of behaviour.
11. A thesis maintained in public, in some English universities, by a candidate for a degree, or to show the proficiency of a student.
12. (countable) A display of behaviour meant to deceive.

    to put on an act

Synonyms

• (something done): deed; see also Thesaurus:action
• (product of a legislative body): statute
• (display of behavior): pretense

Meronyms

• (drama): scene

Holonyms

• (drama): play

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

act (third-person singular simple present acts, present participle acting, simple past and past participle acted)

1. (intransitive) To do something.

2. (obsolete, transitive) To do (something); to perform.
   • 1650, Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, Purity of Intention

     that we act our temporal affairs with a desire no greater than our necessity

   • a. 1677, Isaac Barrow, Of Industry in General (sermon)

     Industry doth beget by producing good habits, and facility of acting things expedient for us to do.

   • 1782, William Cowper, Expostulation

     Uplifted hands that at convenient times / Could act extortion and the worst of crimes.

3. (intransitive) To perform a theatrical role.

4. (intransitive) Of a play: to be acted out (well or badly).
5. (intransitive) To behave in a certain manner for an indefinite length of time.

6. (copulative) To convey an appearance of being.

7. (intransitive) To do something that causes a change binding on the doer.

8. (intransitive, construed with on or upon) To have an effect (on).

9. (transitive) To play (a role).

10. (transitive) To feign.

    • With acted fear the villain thus pursued.

11. (mathematics, intransitive, construed with on or upon, of a group) To map via a homomorphism to a group of automorphisms (of).

12. (obsolete, transitive) To move to action; to actuate; to animate.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Anagrams

• ATC, CAT, CTA, Cat, TAC, TCA, cat, tac

Middle English

Noun

act

1. Alternative form of acte

Old Irish

Conjunction

act

1. Alternative spelling of acht (“but”)

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French acte, from Latin actus.

Noun

act n (plural acte)

1. act, deed, action

Related terms

• ac?iune

See also

• fapt, fapt?
• lucru

Further reading

• act in DEX online - Dic?ionare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language)

Scots

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ak(t)/

Noun

act (plural acts)

1. an act

Verb

act (third-person singular present acts, present participle actin, past actit, past participle actit)

1. act
2. enact
3. decree

References

• Eagle, Andy, ed. (2016) The Online Scots Dictionary, Scots Online.

Welsh

Etymology

From English act.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /akt/

Noun

act f (plural actau)

1. act

Derived terms

• Actau'r Apostolion (“Acts of the Apostles”)
• actio (“to act”)
• actor (“actor”)
• actores (“actress”)

Mutation

Further reading

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present) , “act”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies

English

Etymology

From Latin antec?dentia from Latin antec?d?ns (“preceding”), from antec?d? (“go before”).

Noun

antecedence (countable and uncountable, plural antecedences)

1. The relationship of preceding something in time or order.

   Synonyms: precedence, priority; see also Thesaurus:anteriority

   Antonyms: subsequence; see also Thesaurus:posteriority

   • 1546, George Joye, The Refutation of the Byshop of Winchesters Derke Declaration of His False Articles, London: J. Herford, p. lxi,^[2]

     […] your […] darke argument […] is this breifly in fewe wordes. The office […] of charite is to geue life ergo charitie iustifieth. […] But what and if I denye your antecedence, and proue it by scripture, that faith and not loue is the lyfe of the iustified.

   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, London: Andrew Crooke, “Of Man,” Chapter 12, p. 52,^[3]

     […] whereas there is no other Felicity of Beasts, but the enjoying of their quotidian Food, Ease, and Lusts; as having little, or no foresight of the time to come, for want of observation, and memory of the order, consequence, and dependance of the things they see; Man observeth how one Event hath been produced by another; and remembreth in them Antecedence and Consequence;

   • 1855, Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, § 33, p. 129,^[4]

     […] we are concerned with those relations of antecedence or sequence which it is impossible to think of as other than we know them.

   • 1965, Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric Societies, New York: Knopf, Chapter 8, p. 165,^[5]

     […] the phrase ‘Pre-pottery Neolithic’ has been coined, but this clumsy term carries with it an implication of antecedence to all pottery-using cultures, which is misleading, as such cultures were sometimes only locally without pottery as a cultural trait in areas where potter-making existed in close proximity.

2. That which precedes something or someone (e.g. prior events, origin, ancestry).
   • 1858, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich the Second, New York: Harper, Volume 2, Book 10, Chapter 2, p. 461,^[6]

     […] it is pleasantly notable […] with what desperate intensity, vigilance, and fierceness Madame watches over all his interests, and liabilities, and casualties great and small, leaping with her whole force into M. de Voltaire’s scale of the balance, careless of antecedences and consequences alike; flying with the spirit of an angry brood-hen, at the face of mastiffs in defense of any feather that is M. de Voltaire’s.

   • 1988, Rupert Christiansen, Romantic Affinities, New York: Putnam, Select Bibliography, p. 253,^[7]

     The literature on the French Revolution and its antecedence is vast.

   • 1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, Boston: Little, Brown, 17.22,^[8]

     The child she had conceived in terror, had carried in shame, and had borne in pain had been given the name of that paradisal spring which could, if anything could, wash antecedence into non-existence and torment into calm.

   • 2010, Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question, New York: Bloomsbury, Chapter 11, p. 271,^[9]

     He had at no time been sympathetic to Tyler’s Jewish aspirations. He didn’t need to be married to a Jew. He was Jew enough — at least in his antecedence — for both of them.

3. The length of time by which one event or time period precedes another.
   • 1851, John Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, Volume 2, Appendix, No. 2, pp. 239-240,^[10]

     The average antecedence of spring phenomena at Carlton House to their occurrence at Cumberland House is between a fortnight and three weeks.

   • 1949, William Scott Ferguson, “Orgeonika” in Commemorative Studies in Honor of Theodore Leslie Shear, Hesperia Supplement VIII, reprint, Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1975, p. 146,^[11]

     […] the following year would have shown an antecedence of the conciliar year over the civil of […] fourteen days.

4. (grammar) The relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent.
   • 1895, Austin Phelps and Henry Allyn Frink, Rhetoric: Its Theory and Practice, New York: Scribner, Chapter 13, p. 109,^[12]

     Sometimes this defect amounts to a blundering obliviousness of all antecedence. The following tearful reproof was given by a judge of the State of New York to a prisoner just convicted: “ […] nature has endowed you with a good education and respectable family connections, instead of which you go around the country stealing ducks.”

   • 1941, John B. Opdycke, Harper’s English Grammar, New York: Popular Library, 1965, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 52,^[13]

     The pronouns who and which and what, used interrogatively, […] may refer to a word or to words in the answer to a question, but their antecedence may be indefinite or unrevealed, even after the answer is given.

5. (geology) A geologic process that explains how and why antecedent rivers can cut through mountain systems instead of going around them.
   • 2005, Wallace R. Hansen, The Geologic Story of the Uinta Mountains, Guilford, CT: Falcon, 2nd ed., p. 26,^[14]

     Speculation as to how the Green River established its course across the Uinta Mountains led Powell to introduce such terms as “superposition” and “antecedence” to identify processes by which streams are able to establish and maintain courses across mountain barriers.

6. (astronomy, obsolete) An apparent motion of a planet toward the west.

   Synonym: retrogradation

Synonyms

• antecedency

Related terms

• antecede
• antecedent
• antecedently
• antecessor (obsolete)

Translations

References

Further reading

• Samuel Johnson (15 April 1755) , “Antece?dence”, in A Dictionary of the English Language: […] In Two Volumes, volume I (A–K), London: […] J[ohn] and P[aul] Knapton; […], OCLC 1637325, column 2: “The act or ?tate of going before; precedence.”