COME BEFORE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does come before mean? 

• COME BEFORE (verb)
  The verb COME BEFORE has 1 sense:

1. be the predecessor of

  Familiarity information: COME BEFORE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COME BEFORE (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be the predecessor of

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

come before; precede

Context example:

Bill preceded John in the long line of Susan's husbands

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Somebody ----s PP

 Context examples 

But if the day come before he get on shore, then, unless he be carried he cannot escape.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

So, although there were no eclipses in October, we were at the mid-point of the two eclipses that had come before and the two that will come later.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We could not come before; the old devil of a coachmaker was such an eternity finding out a thing fit to be got into, and now it is ten thousand to one but they break down before we are out of the street.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You also have learned to negotiate well for yourself—just think back to 2016 and 2017 and see how far you’ve come before Saturn came knocking.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Oh! Colonel, said she, with her usual noisy cheerfulness, I am monstrous glad to see you—sorry I could not come before—beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a little, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been at home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things to do after one has been away for any time; and then I have had Cartwright to settle with— Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner!

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)