precede - I learned this word (well, sort of) in Kipling’s story “The Elephant’s Child”.
“One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this 'satiable Elephant's Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, 'What does the Crocodile have for dinner?' Then everybody said, 'Hush!' in a loud and dretful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.
That very next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent, this 'satiable Elephant's Child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind), and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, 'Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner.' And they all spanked him once more for luck, though he asked them most politely to stop.”
And I also learned the meaning of “pachyderm”:
“He went especially out of his way to find a broad Hippopotamus (she was no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to make sure that the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake had spoken the truth about his new trunk. The rest of the time he picked up the melon rinds that he had dropped on his way to the Limpopo--for he was a Tidy Pachyderm pachy = thick, derm = skin
Precocious
<XPAGE=1127Pre*co"cious (?), a. [L. praecox, -ocis, and praecoquus, fr. praecoquere to cook or ripen beforehand; prae before + coquere to cook. See 3d Cook, and cf. Apricot.]
1. Ripe or mature before the proper or natural time; early or prematurely ripe or developed; as, precocious trees. [R.] Sir T. Browne.
2. Developed more than is natural or usual at a given age; exceeding what is to be expected of one's years; too forward; -- used especially of mental forwardness; as, a precocious child; precocious talents.
What is now called “schizophrenia” was formerly called “dementia praecox” because it could occur in young people.
Precoetanean
<XPAGE=1127Pre*co`e*ta"ne*an (?), n. One contemporary with, but older than, another. [Obs.] Fuller.
So Elvis was precoetanean with the Beatles?
Preconization
<XPAGE=1127Pre*con`i*za"tion (?), n. [L. praeconium a crying out in public, fr. praeco, -onis, a crier, a herald: cf. F. préconisation.]
1. A publishing by proclamation; a public proclamation. Bp. Hall.
2. (Eccl.) A formal approbation by the pope of a person nominated to an ecclesiastical dignity. Addis & Arnold
Preconization
<XPAGE=1127Pre*con`i*za"tion (?), n. [L. praeconium a crying out in public, fr. praeco, -onis, a crier, a herald: cf. F. préconisation.]
1. A publishing by proclamation; a public proclamation. Bp. Hall.
2. (Eccl.) A formal approbation by the pope of a person nominated to an ecclesiastical dignity. Addis & Arnold
Precrural
<XPAGE=1127Pre*cru"ral (?), a. (Anat.) Situated in front of the leg or thigh
pre[lap[sar[i[an 7prc#lap ser4c !n8
adj.
1 of the time before the Fall of Man
2 old-fashioned
pre[lap[sar[i[an 7prc#lap ser4c !n8
adj.
1 of the time before the Fall of Man
2 old-fashioned
pre[lap[sar[i[an 7prc#lap ser4c !n8
adj.
1 of the time before the Fall of Man
2 old-fashioned
Ante antediluvian
presbyter
n.
5LL(Ec), an elder: see PRIEST6
1 in the early Christian church and in the Presbyterian Church, an elder
2 in the Episcopal Church, a priest
presbyterian
adj.
5< LL(Ec) presbyterium (see fol.) + 3AN6
1 having to do with church government by presbyters
2 [P3] designating or of a church of a traditionally Calvinistic Protestant denomination governed by presbyters, or elders
n.
[P3] a member of a Presbyterian church
Pres#by[te$ri[an[ism#
n.
And presbyopia is the far-sightedness of elderly people, because the lens of the eye has lost elasticity
