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''predecease'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260718130800-00-⌔
predecease - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
predecease (plural predeceases)
- The death of one person or thing before another.
- ✤ ‘ Private: for the hands of J. G. Utterson alone and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,’ so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer to behold the contents.1
Verb
predecease (third-person singular simple present predeceases, present participle predeceasing, simple past and past participle predeceased)
- (transitive) To die sooner than.
- ✤ Husbands usually predecease their wives.
- ✤ Frederick, Prince of Wales, predeceased his father and never became king.
- ✤ If children prædeceaſe progenitours,/VVe are their ofſpring and they none of ours.2
- ✤ The death of cardinal York extinguished the descendants of James II., and as he had no brother but Charles II., who prædeceased him without legitimate issue, the succession the opened to the descendants of his sister, the princess Henrietta Maria, wife of Phillippe, duke of Orleans.3
- ✤ Two brothers and a sister predeceased him. Bergoglio is survived by a sister, María Elena.4
Etymology
From pre- + decease.
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˌpɹiːdəˈsiːs/
- Rhymes: -iːs
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
Printed 2026-07-18.
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Link to original Footnotes
1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, pages 59–60: ↩
1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC, signature M2, verso: ↩
1883, “The Countess of Albany, Charles Edward, and Alfieri”, in The Monograph, a Serial Collection of Indexed Essays, number II, Bangor, Me.: Q. P. Index, →OCLC, note 4, page 43: ↩
2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian : ↩
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