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Predecessor   /prˈɛdəsˌɛsər/   Listen
Predecessor

noun
1.
One who precedes you in time (as in holding a position or office).
2.
Something that precedes and indicates the approach of something or someone.  Synonyms: forerunner, harbinger, herald, precursor.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Predecessor" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his predecessor "by God himself" and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a campaign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the northern country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor during the second Crusade, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... you see was handed to my predecessor by the heirs of Charles. Louise d'Ernemont possesses another. As for the third, no one knows what ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... were not taken up, as has been alleged, from hostility to a democratic administration, we may state the fact that Madison himself, of whose administration the war shines as the crowning honor, was, like his predecessor in the presidency, opposed originally to its declaration; but was overruled or over-persuaded by the able and gallant young men whose eloquence carried that measure through Congress; and it should ever be remembered that, if the declaration had been postponed ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... with the other Gospels in the work of Ammonius is not in fact known, and it is profitless to conjecture. What we know for certain is that Eusebius, availing himself of the hint supplied by the very imperfect labours of his predecessor, devised an entirely different expedient, whereby he extended to the Gospels of S. Mark, S. Luke and S. John all the advantages, (and more than all,) which Ammonius had made the distinctive property of the first Gospel.(222) His plan was to retain the Four Gospels in their ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... girls on the green footing away—and the ending is full of a sad charm. Op. 30, No. 4, the next in order, is bigger in conception, bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last—those consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they mean something. Here is a mazurka ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... might have procured him, he was generally considered at that time as one of the most fortunate officers in the service. In a little more than seven years, he had risen from an ensign to be a lieut.-colonel. Owing to gross mismanagement and peculation on the part of his predecessor, who was in consequence recommended privately to sell out, if he did not wish to stand the ordeal of a court martial, the regiment was sadly disorganized; but the commander in chief, the late Duke of York, was heard to declare that ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... descendants do not read him they will miss a great source of amusement, and if they do, we hope they will not model their style upon his. Of this, however, there is but little danger, for no age ever borrows the slang of its predecessor. As for 'the gentle and humanising influence,' this is taking Dickens just ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... amusing to talk with the various advocates of the "statue theory," as each successive one is sure to knock over his predecessor's structure before he begins to build ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.

... which has long been coming seems now to have come. The home reader will no longer put up with the careless caricatures of classical chefs d'oeuvre which satisfied his old-fashioned predecessor. Our youngers, in most points our seniors, now expect the translation not only to interpret the sense of the original but also, when the text lends itself to such treatment, to render it verbatim et literatim, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... the friendly co-operation of the Welsh bishops broke down because Augustine insisted on their adoption of Roman customs; and Lawrence, who succeeded to the archbishopric after Augustine's death, could do no more than his predecessor had done. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... and rulers of nations, the example of Numa Pompilius, who, by a conduct opposite to that of Romulus, his predecessor, and most of his successors, rendered the Romans, during his long reign, so respectable and happy. Above all, my dear friend, let us represent to our compatriots the abominable iniquity of the Guinea trade. Let us put to the blush the pretended disciples of the benign Saviour of the World, for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... piscinae in chancel. The old House, or Palace, dated from about 1400. Close to the village (S.W.) lies Moor Park, which readers or tourists must not confound with Moor Park, Rickmansworth (q.v.). The present mansion dates from about 1780; its predecessor was an Elizabethan structure, once the property of Sir John Gore, Kt. (see Gilston), and previously of Sir Garratt Harvey, in whose day Archbishop Usher was a guest at "Moore Place". At Perry Green, 1 mile E. from ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... Kennicott had inherited it from a medical predecessor, and changed it only by adding a white enameled operating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray apparatus, and a small portable typewriter. It was a suite of two rooms: a waiting-room with straight chairs, shaky pine table, and those coverless and unknown magazines ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... were moulded by time and circumstance, and the state of things in the eleventh century was as different from that of the fifth as those of our own time differ from the rule of Richard II. Yet one was as much an outgrowth of its predecessor as the other. ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... at its outset therefore far outran that of Charles or his ministers. Though it confirmed the other acts of its predecessor, the Convention, it could with difficulty be brought to confirm the Act of Indemnity. The Commons pressed for the prosecution of Vane. Vane was protected alike by the spirit of the law and by the king's pledge to the Convention that, even if convicted ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... the Philadelphian library in the museum, containing some 400,000 volumes, had been burned; but there still remained the "daughter library" in the Serapion, containing about 300,000 books. During the episcopate of Theophilus, predecessor of Cyril, a riot took place between the Christians and the Pagans, and the latter "held the Serapion as their head-quarters. Such were the disorder and bloodshed that the emperor had to interfere. He despatched a rescript to Alexandria, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... our Wieland now found, not a predecessor whom he was to follow, nor a colleague with whom he was to work, but a true elder twin brother in the spirit, whom he perfectly resembled, without being formed in his likeness; even as it could not be said of the Menaechmi which was the original, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... youthful hopes, he is related to have made a farewell expedition to the place of his former happiness. There, at least, he was sure to find one sympathizing heart. Miss Seward, who had to the very last minute contended with her friend against Mr. Edgeworth and in support of his less fortunate predecessor, now met him with open arms. No pains were spared by her to alleviate, since she could not remove, the disappointment that evidently possessed him. A legend is preserved in connection with this visit that is curious, though manifestly of very uncertain credibility. It is said ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... wiser than their keepers or the doctors who attended them. It often happened that the aspirations of a superior mind were mistaken for indications of the malady, and led to the incarceration of the supposed lunatic. For instance, a poor man, who lived in the reign of my predecessor, thought, and truly thought, that electricity might be used as a motive power for the heaviest bodies, and supply the place of wood used as fuel in manufactures. He also thought that electricity, then impalpable to the senses, was the material ingredient affecting the weight and coherence ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... for its time —- among other things, it introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special files. All the members but GE eventually pulled out after determining that {second-system effect} had bloated Multics to the point of practical unusability (the 'lean' predecessor in question was {CTSS}). Honeywell commercialized Multics after buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful (among other things, on some versions one was commonly required to enter a password to log out). One of the developers left in the lurch by the project's breakup ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... to the court of Louis XIV. chiefly for the purpose of watching the proceedings of the Jacobites; these circumstances may have added to the odium which attached to his name from the part which was taken by his predecessor, who was Secretary for Scotland, and was charged with having exceeded his authority in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various

... former having a few years ago introduced the Chiaro Oscuro of Hugo de Carpi into England, though he met with no extraordinary encouragement for his ingenuity; and the art had died with him had not the latter attempted to revive it, but with less encouragement than his predecessor. Mr. Jackson, however, has lately invented a new method of printing paper hangings from blocks, which is very ornamental, and exceeds the common method of paper-staining (as it is termed) by the delicacy of his drawings, ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... Brown, the most important of Philadelphia writers, the first professional man-of-letters in America, and the predecessor of all cis-Atlantic novelists, was born in Philadelphia, January 17, 1771, and in that city he founded, in 1803-4, the Literary ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... from him I hear that the old controversy with the Latins has broken out anew, and more hotly than ever; that the new Emperor is an azymite, and disposed to adhere to the compact of union of the churches east and west made with the Pope of Rome by his predecessor, leaving heart-blisters burning as those which divided the Jews. Indeed, I much fear the likeness may prove absolute. It certainly will when the Turk appears before our holy city ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... time I had contemplated removing you," continued the unemotional voice. "But I rejoice to think that I failed. It would have been an error of judgement. I have useful work for such men. You shall assist in the extensive laboratories of my distinguished predecessor." ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... campaign, their year of office expired; sometimes the rashness, sometimes the perverseness of a colleague, proving an impediment or detriment; and finally succeeding to the unfortunate administration of a predecessor, with an army of raw or ill-disciplined men. But, on the other hand, kings, being not only free from every kind of impediment, but masters of circumstances and seasons, control all things in subserviency ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... the French Revolution seemed to usher in the millennium of freedom and peace; and his interpretation of its earlier incidents in his poem on that theme[2] illustrates in style and spirit the highly original nature of his mind. More than any predecessor he understood how the peculiarly poetical possibilities of sentimentalism might be elicited, namely by emphasizing its mystical quality. Thus under his guidance mysticism, which in the early seventeenth ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... United States and the Confederate States. Such are some of the effects of bad measures in such critical times as these. Mr. Seddon has no physique to sustain him. He has intellect, and has read much; but, nevertheless, such great men are sometimes more likely to imitate some predecessor at a critical moment, or to adopt some bold yet inefficient suggestion from another, than to originate an adequate one themselves. He is a scholar, an invalid, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... its predecessor. Bradley splashed about for a few minutes in the cold pool early each morning and after a time the girl tried it and liked it. Toward the center it was deep enough for swimming, and so he taught her to swim—she was probably the ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... his interest in physiological experimental research, Dr. Beyer enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded a Ph. D. degree in 1887. Unlike his predecessor, Dr. Beyer was primarily interested in carrying on research on the physiological action of certain drugs and in pharmacology. This was evident from the original scientific papers mentioned in the Smithsonian Annual Reports and published ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh

... appetite; and possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father (and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil hour, the Government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Capt. Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time, a great ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... patriarchal air of benevolent respectability which his predecessor Calcraft had acquired during a short experience as a family butler; but as an executioner that kindly old gentleman had been a sad bungler in his time compared with the scientific and expeditious ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... surroundings that promoted this healthful evolution applied also a continual test of fitness to persons. As each war began, there were still to be found in the prime of vigor and usefulness men whose efficiency had been proved in its predecessor, and thus the line of sustained ability in leadership was carried on from one naval generation to another, through the sixty-odd years, 1652-1713, over which these ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... at least unknown to fame: Is there a strife in Heaven about his name, Where every famous predecessor vies, And makes a faction for it in the skies? Or must it be reserved to thought alone? Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton.[177] Things worthy silence must not be reveal'd; Thus the true name of Rome was kept conceal'd,[178] ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... German astronomer devoted to it the same attention that Tycho had given to the earlier phenomenon. It, too, like Tycho's, was at first the brightest object in the stellar heavens, although it seems never to have quite equaled its famous predecessor in splendor. It disappeared after a year, also turning of a red color as it became more faint. We shall see the significance of this as we go on. Some of Kepler's contemporaries suggested that the outburst of this star was due ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... in the Creation or Adam and Eve chapel, is a figure of remarkable beauty, and a very great improvement on her predecessor. The left arm is a restoration by Cav. Prof. Antonini, but no one who was not told of the fact would suspect it. The heads both of the Adam and the Eve have been less successfully repainted than the rest of the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... pert intrusion on a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful of its position and duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its predecessor;—these are a select few of the difficulties that the nature of language and of man conspire to put upon the writer. He is well served by his mind and ear if he can win past all such traps and ambuscades, robbed of only a little ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... champion of autocracy and police power, but he was at the same time an enemy of all manifestations of mob rule which tended to undermine the authority of the State. A few days after his appointment the new Minister issued a circular in which he reiterated the recent declaration of his predecessor concerning the "resolve of the Government to prosecute every kind of violence against the Jews," announcing emphatically that "any manifestation of disorders would unavoidably result in the immediate prosecution of all official ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... saloon skylight by the fall of the mizen-mast, and upon this job the carpenter, who was an ambitious man in his own way and not altogether devoid of taste, was taxing his skill to the utmost in an effort to make the new skylight both a stronger and a more handsome piece of work than its predecessor. The barometer was slowly but steadily rising; and everything seemed to point in the direction of fine weather. Lucky was it for our voyagers that such ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... office, and in its gentle flow and sweet fragrance, symbolised from of old the inspiration of a divine influence that accompanied every divine call. We are to remember, too, how it had fared with David's predecessor. Saul had been chosen by God; had been for a while guided and upheld by God. But he fell into sin, and—not because he fell into it, but because he continued in it; not because he did wrong, but because he did not repent—the solemn ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... "goes," from a quarter to nine till just eleven, with a verve that must be most satisfactory to all concerned. So I can congratulate the Author upon a piece full of lines that tell, and the Manager upon a play that is likely to rival in popularity its predecessor, the phenomenally-successful Our Flat. And I can offer these congratulations with a dear conscience, because I am neither Author of the piece nor Manager of the theatre, but as Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING might ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... an important alternative. While Locke decides for the second half of the proposition, Leibnitz defends the first by a delicate application of the concept of unconscious representation and of implicit knowledge, which his predecessor rejects ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... mother being dead, and many members of the family distributed. Incidentally, we are told by Mr. Hare that the Gurneys of Earlham at this time drove out with four black horses, and that when Bishop Bathurst, Stanley's predecessor, required horses for State occasions to drive him to the cathedral, he borrowed these, and the more modest episcopal horses took the Quaker family to their meeting-house. It does not come within the scope of this book, discursive as ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... interested in the wanderings of the poor Indian monarch, snatched from the repose of his tomb.... One more! Each of Freya's confidences evoked a new predecessor from the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... England Becket conceived his business to be the administration of the laws: as Archbishop he was first and foremost the champion of the Christian religion, the protector of the poor, and the defender of the liberties of the Church. All unwilling, like his great predecessor, St. Anselm, to become archbishop, from the hour of his consecration to the See of Canterbury, in 1162, Becket was as firm as Anselm had been in resisting the absolutism of the King. To the King's extreme annoyance the Chancellorship was at once given up—the only instance known of the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... as it is termed, in so many different places and countries," returned Eve, smiling, "that I sometimes fancy I was born a woman, like my great predecessor and namesake, the mother of Abel. If a congress of nations, in the way of masters, can make one independent of prejudice, I may claim to possess the advantage. My greatest fear is, that in acquiring liberality, I ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... the country at large. He asserted that the most important feature of his administration would be the maintenance and enforcement of the reforms inaugurated by President Roosevelt. He justified appropriations, as his predecessor had done, for maintaining a suitable army and navy; advocated the conservation of our natural resources, the establishment of postal savings banks, and direct lines of steamers ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... drawn; Euripides draws them as they are'; 'Aeschylus did the right thing, but without knowing it'—all imply the academic standpoint... Even his exquisite diction, which is such a marked advance on the stiff magnificence of his predecessor, betrays the lesser man in the greater artist. Aeschylus's superhuman speech seems like natural superhuman speech. It is just the language that Prometheus would talk, that an ideal Agamemnon or Atossa might talk in the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... President: "This practice of itinerant speech-making has suddenly broken out in this country to a fearful extent. Electioneering for the Presidency has spread its contagion to the President himself, to his now only competitor, to his immediate predecessor, to the candidates Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and to many distinguished members of both branches of Congress. The tendency of all this is to the corruption of popular elections both by violence ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... Zen holds a Unique Position among the Established Religions of the World (5) The Historical Antiquity of Zen (6) The Denial of Scriptural Authority by Zen (7) The Practisers of Zen hold the Buddha as their Predecessor, whose Spiritual Level they Aim to Attain (8) The Iconoclastic Attitude of Zen (9) Zen Activity (10) The Physical and Mental Training (11) ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... had become dry the Colorado River was born—just how, or when, or because of what, one can only guess. But when it was born it began to undo what its predecessor had done. It cut a channel in the surface of the sandstone and then began business in earnest. It loosened little pieces of sharp flint from the sandstone and swept them along with such force that each ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of shopkeepers and barmaids was too low for the age, and too unpoetic for the genius, of Beaumont and Fletcher, inferior in every respect as they are to their great predecessor and contemporary. How inferior would they have appeared, had not Shakespeare existed for them to imitate;—which in every play, more or less, they do, and in their tragedies most glaringly:—and yet—(O shame! shame!)—they miss no opportunity of ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... funds subscribed to feed and clothe members of Parliament to arming volunteers. Nevertheless, it was an awkward question to answer in the presence of an audience excited by Augusta Goold's beauty and splendid audacity. A really strong man, like, for instance, O'Rourke's predecessor, John O'Neill, might have faced the situation, and won, if not the immediate cheers, at least the respect of the Irish people. But Mr. O'Rourke was not a strong man, and besides he was out of temper and had lost his nerve. He took perhaps the worst course open ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... very spot almost. It was a ship from Cadiz for Savannah. She had taken fire. He picked up among others three people lashed to some pieces of wreckage—a man, a woman, and their baby. She was dead and he dying. He did die later aboard his ship, the predecessor of the Bess. The baby lived. Do ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... Like its predecessor, this card went at once into my basket. I had nearly finished the B's in my index before the ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... subterraneous prison!" shouted a person at the entrance of the mine. The rumor was instantly repeated along the crowd, and a horseman set off at full speed for St. Etienne, with the gratifying news; another followed, and confirmed the report of his predecessor. The whole town was in motion, and all classes seemed to partake of the general joy, with a feeling as if each had been individually interested. In the exuberance of their delight they were already deliberating ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... fully shown, how favourable such expeditions might be made to the health of those engaged in them; and Governor Phillip was happy enough to confirm the opinion, that the success of his great predecessor, in this essential point, was not in any degree the effect of chance, but arose from that care and attention of which he has humanely given us the detail; and which, in similar circumstances, may generally be expected to produce the same result. If the number of convicts who died between the ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... another life. She herself, as she lay silent and unresponsive, had been the first concrete example of it. Inevitably thought of her came to him now,—practical, material thought, crowding from his brain the blind terror that had been its predecessor. Where was his mother now? He pictured again the furnace into which he had gazed from the mouth of the kennel. Though perhaps she would not feel it, she would be burned—burned to a crisp—destroyed like the fuel he had tossed ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... now near twenty years,' said Montoni, 'since this castle came into my possession. I inherit it by the female line. The lady, my predecessor, was only distantly related to me; I am the last of her family. She was beautiful and rich; I wooed her; but her heart was fixed upon another, and she rejected me. It is probable, however, that she was herself rejected of the person, whoever he might be, on whom she bestowed her favour, for a ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... the proposed measure for the "better regulation" of the City of London. If this is better, it is devoutly to be hoped that no future ministry will bring forward a Bill for the "best regulation." Every additional step in this direction can only be worse than its predecessor, for the goal to be attained is not only the ruin of civic influence, but the subversion of ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... until the arrival of Colonel Burr, in the autumn of the year 1778. He took command of the same troops which his predecessor, Colonel Littlefield, commanded. At the moment of Colonel Burr's arrival, Colonel Littlefield [1] had returned from a plundering expedition (for to plunder those called tories was then deemed lawful), and had brought ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... has yet to expect; or it is more than probable that the present humble endeavour would have been superseded, or confined, at least, to the task of restating the opinion of my predecessor with such modifications as the differences that will always exist between men who have thought independently, and each for himself, have never failed to introduce, even on problems of far easier ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... picnics and love-making. Then he was only an irresponsible attache; now he is here as a very full-blooded plenipotentiary, with the burden of a special German political mission in China, bequeathed him by his pompous and mannerless predecessor, Baron von H——, to support. But a man is the present German Minister if there was ever one, and it was in the newly macadamised Legation Street that the incident I am about to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... ancestor and no pupil worthy of the name. He indulges in a dainty pessimism and is most of all an impressionist, not of the vogue of Zola—although he can be, on occasion, as brutally plain as he—but more in the manner of Victor Hugo, his predecessor, or Alphonse Daudet, his lifelong friend. In Loti's works, however, pessimism is softened to a musical melancholy; the style is direct; the vocabulary exquisite; the moral situations familiar; the characters not complex. In short, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... peace policy is over. War with England must be. The king professes now to do like his predecessor, and govern without a minister; but we all know what that means. To do without a minister is one thing for Louis Quatorze, but another thing altogether for Louis Quinze. The Duchesse de Chateauroux will be minister—for the present. Then we ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... would exceed the bounds of credulity, had not facts in corroboration of it been so established by witnesses, that nothing can shake them. Among ecclesiastics of this denomination we may mention that Pontiff, who, from a vile principle of hate for his predecessor, to whom he had been an enemy, as soon as he ascended the Papal chair directed the corpse to be taken out from the grave, had the fingers and the head cut off and thrown into the sea, ordered the remainder of the body to be burnt to ashes and excommunicated the soul. Could revenge ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... cede, recede, secede, concede, intercede, procedure, precedent, succeed, exceed, success, recess, concession, procession, intercession, abscess, ancestor, cease, decease; (2) antecedent, precedence, cessation, accessory, predecessor. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... dazzlingly, that her "smart" governess was a bride. "He's my husband, if you please, and I'm his little wife. So NOW we'll see who's your little mother!" She caught her pupil to her bosom in a manner that was not to be outdone by the emissary of her predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had lurched back into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the last word, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... investigator's language addressed to Nature, to which she sends intelligible replies. These replies, however, usually reach the questioner in whispers too feeble for the public ear. But after the investigator comes the teacher, whose function it is so to exalt and modify the experiments of his predecessor, as to render them fit for public presentation. This secondary function I shall endeavour, in the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... were called Ghibellines, these names being first heard at Pistoia. Frederick, marching from Pisa, assailed and wasted the territories of the church in a variety of ways; so that the pope, having no other remedy, unfurled against him the banner of the cross, as his predecessor had done against the Saracens. Frederick, that he might be suddenly abandoned by his people, as Frederick Barbarossa and others had been, took into his pay a number of Saracens; and to bind them to him, and establish in Italy a firm bulwark ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... yielding up of the secrets of the Meeting House had started a succession of shocks, each one harder than its predecessor to bear, until she was left almost paralyzed and quite powerless to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... more violent in his passions, reigned but seven years (529-522 B.C.). His most conspicuous achievement was the conquest of EGYPT. One ground or pretext of his hostility, according to the tale of Herodotus, was the fact that Amasis, the predecessor of Psammeticus III., not daring to refuse the demand of his daughter as a wife, to be second in rank to the Persian queen, had fraudulently sent, either to Cambyses, or, before his time, to Cyrus, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... satirical works) fifty years hence he will be recognized as the greatest American poet of our day, notwithstanding the contemporary judgment which has in England, and I believe in America, assigned that proud place to his friend and predecessor at Harvard College, H. W. Longfellow. To any reader who has not met with Lowell's Poems, and who may be induced to read them after a perusal of the present volume, I should recommend "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "A Parable," "Stanzas on Freedom," "The Present Crisis," ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... Having been unsuccessful in his attempt by open force, he made use of the arts of negotiation, but with an event not more to his satisfaction. This viceroy being recalled, a son-in-law of the Emperor's succeeded, who treated us even worse than his predecessor had done. ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... the southern seas, builds its little cell, works its little day and dies, leaving to succeeding generations of its kind to build their little cells and die, each using its predecessor's mansion as a foundation for its own, until pile on pile forms a mass, and mass on mass makes a mountain—the coral insect, had reared one of its submarine edifices just where the cable-ship Triton had to pass that day. For ages man had traversed that sea without passing exactly ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... revolt for years, and have only waited for a leader of the house of the Prophet. Their natural leader would be the Shereef of Mecca; and it is understood that the Shereef who has just been deposed by the Sultan, as well as his predecessor who was mysteriously assassinated, was on the point of declaring himself Caliph. The new Shereef is a young man ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... afterwards added we shall soon have occasion to speak more fully. Sister was still laboring for the erection of the building, when M. de St. Vallier, having been consecrated in Paris, January, 1686, by M. de Laval, his predecessor, returned to Canada, accompanied by the latter prelate, who came back to end his days in the practice of the most sublime virtues of private life in the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Quebec. He always ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... the Bishop was all animation and good humour, but too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley much—a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich; for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... everything from a legal point of view. A second or junior Elohist was less methodical and more fragmentary, supplying additional information, furnishing new theocratic details, and setting forth the relation of Israel to heathen nations and to God. In contrast with his predecessor, he has great beauty of description, which is exemplified in the account of Isaac's sacrifice and the history of Joseph; in picturesque and graphic narratives interspersed with few reflections. His parallels to the later writer commonly called the Jehovist, ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... me the date of the death of Edmund Lodge, the herald? I suppose there will be some account of him in the Obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, to which I wish to refer. Was he a descendant of the Rev. Edmund Lodge, the predecessor of Dawes in the Mastership of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... did not take place. Lord Coke afterwards married Lady Campbell; and Miss Shawe, William, fifth Lord Byron, the immediate predecessor ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... meal, which happened to be dinner, was ready, I proceeded to wait upon them. They noticed the change of waiters, and asked me what had become of my predecessor. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... method is, I believe, the safer way; both, however, are, I understand, most commodious. I may explain to you that the present is a particularly auspicious occasion for your journey; you will travel in the company of the new Junior Dean, whose society, I am sure, you will find delightful. His predecessor, a personal friend of my own, succumbed, I grieve to say, a few months ago—owing to the alleged inadequate supply of beef-steaks at a 'Torpid' breakfast. . . . Painful, but apparently inevitable. I need hardly say, the perpetrators ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... in supposing, in opposition to Ernst Haeckel, that Goethe did not intend to have his idea of unity and development taken in a real but in an ideal sense, and hence could not be called a direct representative of the evolution theory, still he is all the more decidedly a predecessor of that theory in directing attention to the unity in plan and metamorphosis of plants and animals. Louis Agassiz, who, on the other hand, continued up to his death in opposition to the entire doctrine of descent, made the idea of types the principle ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... good enough to inform me of some of his intended doings on the market a day or so before the rest of the world knows them, and Eddy has always shown a strong desire to get early information too. Do you remember my telling you that your predecessor at the office left a little abruptly? There was a reason. I engaged her as a confidential secretary, and she overdid it. She confided in Eddy. From the look on your face as I came in I gathered that he had just been proposing that you should perform a similar act of Christian charity. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... have vanished, as it were, from before our eyes, has been shockingly sudden. To-day the report may be that the milkman is gone; yesterday it was the butcher's boy; the day before the poulterer, and presently a new servant appears with a message from a friend, and on inquiring for his predecessor, we learn that he is dead. Ten or fifteen cases of this sort have occurred among those with whom we are in constant and ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... everybody, others may be known only to individuals, who have found out or been taught how to approach them, and who accordingly regard such ghosts as their private property. In every village a public ghost is worshipped, and the chief is the sacrificer. He has learned from his predecessor how to throw or heave the sacrifice, and he imparts this knowledge to his son or nephew, whom he intends to leave as his successor. The place of sacrifice is an enclosure with a little house or shrine in which the relics are ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... yet. Your predecessor, who went through the office of being eaten a year ago, had not even ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... was a more modern, semi-historical personage of the same name, to whom all the virtues, powers, and adventures of his predecessor have been attributed. He was the chief of the AEsir, inhabitants of Asia Minor, who, sore pressed by the Romans, and threatened with destruction or slavery, left their native land about 70 B.C., and migrated into Europe. This Odin is said to have conquered Russia, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... was sitting next to him at the time; but he had implied also that the mantle which was to be transferred from Mr. Palliser to Mr. Bonteen would be carried by its new wearer with grace very inferior to that which had marked all the steps of his predecessor. Ratler, and Erle, and Fitzgibbon, and others had laughed in their sleeves at the expression, understood by them, of Mr. Gresham's doubt as to the qualifications of his new assistant, and Sir Orlando Drought, in continuing his ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... princes' struggles for the throne continued. Nobody troubled about the fate of the unfortunate emperor in his capital. He received no reinforcements, so that he was helpless in face of the next attack of the Huns, and in 316 he was compelled to surrender like his predecessor. Now the Hun Han dynasty held both capitals, which meant virtually the whole of the western part of North China, and the so-called "Western Chin dynasty" thus came to its end. Its princes and generals and many ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... man to the grave loaded with heavier curses. Mr. Sevier's place was promptly taken by a Mr. Hopkins, and the change was quite a relief, he being a very different man. He was, in{75} all respects, a better man than his predecessor; as good as any man can be, and yet be an overseer. His course was characterized by no extraordinary cruelty; and when he whipped a slave, as he sometimes did, he seemed to take no especial pleasure in it, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... Siddons herself, with action always just and frequently commanding, soon led us to the forgetfulness of her moderate stature, though oppressed, incidentally, by the towering dignity of her lord: It is the duty of an artist to contemplate the works of a renowned predecessor or contemporary with unaffected reverence, but not with servile devotion, and Miss Smith occasionally varied, and with advantage, from the model that was before her. When Macbeth, incited to the murder of Duncan, interposes—"if ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... to add to the gold which his confiscations amassed by trading on a vast scale; his ships, freighted with tin, wool, and cloth, made the name of the merchant-king famous in the ports of Italy and Greece. Henry was as adroit and as shameless a financier as his predecessor. He was his own treasurer, he kept his own accounts, he ticked off with his own hand the compositions he levied on the western shires ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... Alexey Alexandrovitch's department, and was a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these lands in the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor of Alexey Alexandrovitch's predecessor. And vast sums of money had actually been spent and were still being spent on this business, and utterly unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... first brought forward to oppose the new religion, these doctrines of Greek philosophy being largely supplemented by mystic ideas derived from oriental sources. It was however Pythagoras, the great Greek-Italian philosopher of the sixth century B.C., the predecessor and to some extent the inspirer of Socrates and Plato, who was most generally accepted as the rival of St. Paul. It was his mystical doctrines of Number and Harmony, of the Unit and the Triad, which were most often marshalled against the Christian doctrine of the Unity ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... policy the notable feature of the Administration. His hopes were dashed, however, by the assassination of Garfield and by the accession of President Arthur. The new Secretary of State, F T. Frelinghuysen, reversed nearly all of his predecessor's policies. When Blaine returned to the Department of State in 1889, he found a less sympathetic chief in President Harrison and a less brilliant role to play. Whether his final retirement before the close of the Harrison Administration was due directly to the conflict of views which certainly ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... its nascent reason allowed it to conceive them. Then the first megalithic blocks were erected; then began that mad heaping up and up, which was to last nearly fifty centuries; and temples were built above temples, palaces over palaces, each generation striving to outdo its predecessor by ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... was as really a chattel as was his predecessor, only he had to look out for himself to a greater extent; and, more was expected from him of accomplishment for the opulence and glory of the master, especially insofar as these depended upon the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... seemed more ravishing than its predecessor. To test the worth of this impression, we reverted to the 'Black Lily.' One breath of this satisfied us that it was the best of the lot. To be quite sure, we smelt the 'Blue Rose,' and were instantly convinced ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... feeling greatly honored by the fact that my predecessor in the course was Theodore Parker, and my successor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both talked with me much about my subject, and Parker surprised me. He was the nearest approach to omniscience I had ever seen. He was able to read, not only Russian, but ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... the energy, capacity, and character of Mr Reid, in whose hands the future of the colony is thus placed, both yourself and your predecessor have always spoken in the highest terms, and his interests in the colony are already so enormous that he has every motive to work for and to stimulate its development; but he is already, I believe, advanced in years, and though the contract requires ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... has transmitted to me a copy of the message sent by my predecessor to that body on the 21st day of February last, proposing to take its advice on the subject of a proposition made by the British Government through its minister here to refer the matter in controversy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... to our present sovereign, know not how to form a prayer to heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state of felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and when Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious predecessor. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... there. The disease had increased during the king's absence, and the alarm and anxiety were so great, that the rejoicings on account of the arrival of the queen were omitted. She journeyed quietly, therefore, to Westminster, and took up her abode at Somerset House, which had been the residence of her predecessor. They had fitted it up for her reception, providing for it, among other conveniences, a Roman Catholic chapel, where she could enjoy the services of religion in the forms to which ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... to the men who were sent there after the death of my old rector. The first man who went had no patience with the people in their loyalty to his predecessor, and he could not bear to hear them tell of the work which had been done in the past. He became jealous, said sharp things, and turned the people against him. The next man took no interest in the things which concern an agricultural people. He openly said that he hated farming, ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... I had to try and keep cool under the most violent treatment by a clique of students, among whom my predecessor had raised up enemies for me; and by the unerring certainty of my conducting I had to overcome the initial opposition of the orchestra, which had been ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... does not much impress the idea of the approach to a place of such confinement. Over the gates is a pole, supporting a dirty and tattered bonnet rouge, of which species of republican decoration there are very few now to be seen in Paris. The door was opened to me by the principal gaoler, whose predecessor had been dismissed on account of his imputed connivance in the escape of sir Sidney Smith. His appearance seemed fully to qualify him for his savage office, and to insure his superiors against all future apprehension, of a remission of duty by any act of humanity, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... encounter; for abuses which have already become inveterate, and scandals favored by indulgence, cannot be overcome without strenuous efforts and repeated conflicts. Such was the case of a certain prebend whom the predecessor of his illustrious Lordship had tried to correct, but had never been able to do so on account of the support that the delinquent received from a certain potent personage; accordingly the archbishop's zeal contented itself with giving information of the whole matter to the king ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various



Words linked to "Predecessor" :   forefather, indicant, indication, precede



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