antecedent

Definition:

The noun or noun phrase that a pronoun refers to. See also:

• Referent
• Reference
• Anaphora (grammar)
• Cataphora
• Exophora

Etymology:

From the Latin, "to go before"

Examples and Observations:

• "When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them."
  (G.K. Chesterton)



• "A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out."
  (Virginia Woolf)



• "Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon."
  (H. L. Mencken)



• "Like other pronouns, the relative pronoun has an antecedent, the noun that it refers to and replaces.
  
  "Three features of the relative pronoun will help you recognize the relative clause: (1) The relative pronoun renames the headword of the noun phrase in which it appears . . .. (2) The relative pronoun fills a sentence slot in its own clause. And (3) the relative pronoun introduces the clause, no matter what slot it fills.
  
  "Let's look at [an] example, this one a relative clause introduced by that, perhaps the most common relative pronoun:
  
  This is the house that Jack built.
  (1) The antecedent of that is house . . .; (2) that fills a slot in its clause; and (3) that opens its clause, even though it functions as the direct object in the clause."
  (Martha Kolln and Robert Funk, Understanding English Grammar, 5th ed. Allyn and Bacon, 1998)



• "I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose."
  (George Carlin)

Pronunciation: an-ti-SEED-ent