noun

• (grammar) The relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent.
  "Sometimes this defect amounts to a blundering obliviousness of all antecedence. The following tearful reproof was given by a judge of the State of New York to a prisoner just convicted: “[…] nature has endowed you with a good education and respectable family connections, instead of which you go around the country stealing ducks.”"
• (geology) A geologic process that explains how and why antecedent rivers can cut through mountain systems instead of going around them.
  "2005, Wallace R. Hansen, The Geologic Story of the Uinta Mountains, Guilford, CT: Falcon, 2nd ed., p. 26, Speculation as to how the Green River established its course across the Uinta Mountains led Powell to introduce such terms as “superposition” and “antecedence” to identify processes by which streams are able to establish and maintain courses across mountain barriers."
• (astronomy, obsolete) An apparent motion of a planet toward the west.