Etymology

precedence

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Today it means: The state of preceding in importance or priority. Full definition →

Middle French précédence
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The story

  1. Middle French · derived fromprécédence“the state of preceding, anteriority”
  2. English todayprecedence

From Middle French précédence (“the state of preceding, anteriority”). Morphologically precede + -ence.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.