precurse

English

Etymology

English pre- +‎ curse, from Latin praecursum (supine of praecurrō [“run before”]).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /pɹɪˈkɜɹs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Verb

precurse (third-person singular simple present precurses, present participle precursing, simple past and past participle precursed)

1. (transitive) To forerun or precede.
   • 1987, Shrikant Jichkar, Explorations in Economic Theory of Socialism, page 151:

     It is true that competition in capitalism precurses new economic order.

   • 1994, Herbert A. Kirst, “5: Semi-Synthetic Derivatives of 16-Membered Macrolide Antibiotics”, in Gwynn Pennant Ellis, David K. Luscombe, editors, Progress in Medicinal Chemistry, volume 31, page 278:

     As one example, precursing a strain of S. ambofaciens with an aglycone of tylosin while blocking production of spiramycin with cerulenin yielded hybrid macrolides named chimeramycins, which combined structural elements of both tylosin and spiramycin [152].

   • 2006, Johan Muller, “On the shoulders of giants: verticality of knowledge and the school curriculum”, in Rob Moore, Madeleine Arnot, John Beck, Harry Daniels, editors, Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform, page 23:

     The only way this can be intelligible is by conceiving that school maths competence ‘precurses’ (Gee, 2001) university maths competence, which ‘precurses’ real maths adeptness. […] After all, this idea of the interpenetration of symbolic competence is built into Bernstein's explanation of how the middle-class home code precurses its young into the school code better than does the working-class home code.

   • 2010, Charles E. Needham, Blast Waves, page 233:

     I will use the Priscilla event as a representative example of a thermally precursed blast wave from a nuclear detonation.

Noun

precurse (plural precurses)

1. (archaic) A prediction, a prognostication.

   And even the like precurse of fierce events,
   As harbingers preceding still the fates
   And prologue to the omen coming on,
   Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
   Unto our climatures and countrymen. (Shakespeare)

Anagrams

• precures