Preceding means coming before something else in time or order. When you read about “the preceding chapter” in a book, you're being told to look back at the chapter that came right before the current one. If a teacher asks you to review the preceding lesson, she wants you to think about what you learned last time.

The word helps us talk clearly about sequences and order. In a list of presidents, Abraham Lincoln preceded Andrew Johnson because Lincoln served first. The preceding week means the week that just passed, and preceding events are things that happened earlier. You might hear someone say, “As I mentioned in my preceding remarks,” meaning something they said just moments before.

Think of preceding as pointing backward in time or space, like an arrow pointing to what came earlier. It's the opposite of following or subsequent, which point forward to what comes next. When a mystery novel reveals that “the preceding events led to the crime,” it's showing how earlier actions created the situation. Understanding what preceded something helps you see how one thing led to another.