precursor
noun
ˈprē-ˌkər-
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Precursor Has Latin Roots
With its prefix pre-, meaning "before", a precursor is literally a "forerunner", and in fact forerunner first appeared as the translation of the Latin praecursor. But the two words function a little differently today. A forerunner may simply come before another thing, but a precursor generally paves the way for something. So, for example, the Office of Strategic Services in World War II was the immediate precursor of today's Central Intelligence Agency, while the blues music of the 1930s and 1940s was only one of the precursors of the rock and roll of today.
Synonyms
Examples of precursor in a Sentence
Ed Caesar, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2024
Nearly all the precursor chemicals that are needed to make fentanyl come from China.
—CBS News, 31 Oct. 2024
Risk analysis Between 2021 and 2025, Intel planned to achieve five processor nodes—Intel 7 and Intel 4 are already in use, Intel 3 is ready for high-volume manufacturing, and Intel 20A is set to debut with Arrow Lake processors, serving as a precursor to the more refined 18A node.
—Gurufocus, Forbes, 29 Oct. 2024
Ice Cube has declared that his music career served as a precursor for Kendrick Lamar‘s own reign of dominance and challenging of the status quo.
—Preezy Brown, VIBE.com, 28 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Precursor.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/precursor. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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precursor
noun
ˈprē-ˌkər-
Medical Definition
precursor
noun
ˈprē-ˌ
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