different between mountain vs antecedence

English

Etymology

From Middle English mountayne, mountain, montaigne, from Anglo-Norman muntaine, muntaigne, from Old French montaigne, from Vulgar Latin *mont?nea, feminine of *mont?neus (“mountainous”), alteration of Latin mont?nus, from m?ns (“mountain”), from Proto-Indo-European *monti (compare Welsh mynydd (“mountain”), Albanian mat (“bank, shore”), Avestan ????????????????? (mati, “promontory”)), from *men- (“to project, stick out”). Displaced native Middle English berwe, bergh, from Old English beorg (whence English barrow); and partially displaced non-native Old English munt, from Latin m?ns (whence English mount).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?ma?nt?n/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?ma?nt?n/, /?ma?ntn?/ [?mã???(n)?n?], [?mæ????(n)?n?]
• Rhymes: -a?nt?n, -a?nt?n

Noun

mountain (countable and uncountable, plural mountains)

1. (countable) An elevation of land of considerable dimensions rising more or less abruptly, forming a conspicuous figure in the landscape, usually having a small extent of surface at its summit. [from 12th c.]

   Everest is the highest mountain in the world.

   We spent the weekend hiking in the mountains.
2. (countable) Something very large in size or quantity; a huge amount; a great heap. [from 15th c.]

   He was a real mountain of a man, standing seven feet tall.

   There's still a mountain of work to do.
3. (figuratively) A difficult task or challenge.
4. (uncountable, now historical) Wine from Malaga made from grapes that grow on a mountain. [from 18th c.]
   • 1785-1789, James Boswell, The English Experiment (diaries)

     Called on Courtenay, with whom I walked to Hampstead Heath, and got into excellent spirits, enjoying fine fresh air; then dined with him tête-a-tête on mutton broth and mackerel and drank mountain and old port moderately.

5. (countable, slang) A woman's large breast.
6. (cartomancy) The twenty-first Lenormand card.

Usage notes

As with the names of rivers and lakes, the names of mountains are typically formed by adding the generic word before or after the unique term. In the case of mountains, when the word precedes the unique term, mount is used: Mount Olympus, Mount Everest, Mount Tai; when the word follows the unique term, mountain is used: Crowfoot Mountain, Blue Mountain, Rugged Mountain. Generally speaking, such names will be adjectives or attributive nouns, but many foreign placenames formed with adjectives—as China's Huashan—are translated as though they were proper names: Mount Hua instead of Hua Mountain or Flourishing Mountain.

Mountain chains are never named with mount, only with mountains, a translated term, or a pluralized name.

Synonyms

Hyponyms

Meronyms

Holonyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• Category:Mountains

Further reading

• mountain on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Mountain in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

References

• mountain in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• mountain in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• antimuon

Middle English

Noun

mountain

1. Alternative form of mountayne

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.”