1 [C,U] an official action or decision that has happened in the past and that is seen as an example or a rule to be followed in a similar situation later:
The ruling set a precedent for future libel cases.
2 [C,U] a similar action or event that happened earlier:
historical precedents * There is no precedent for a disaster of this scale. * Such protests are without precedent in recent history.
3 [U] the way that things have always been done
SYNTRADITION:
to break with precedent (= to do sth in a different way)
seealsoUNPRECEDENTED
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of precedent come from?
This entry for precedent is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is precedent a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, precedent is tagged as noun.
Does precedent appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — precedent appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
