From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishprecedingpre‧ced‧ing /prɪˈsiːdɪŋ/ AWL adjective [only before noun] formalBEFORE happening or coming before the time, place, or part mentioned SYN previous OPP followingpreceding days/weeks/months/years income tax paid in preceding yearspreceding chapter/paragraph/page etc the diagram in the preceding chapter
Examples from the Corpus
preceding• The preceding chapters have described several key events in recent French history.• He had been arrested at least fifteen times in the preceding five years.• This seems to contradict the argument in the preceding paragraph.• In the preceding section of the poem, Whitman is talking about how important it is to live in the present.• The company made more profit in that one month than it made in the whole of the preceding year.preceding chapter/paragraph/page etc• I hope that I have made the merits of the New Criticism sufficiently clear in the preceding pages.• It is helpful to start your sentences with the action verbs from the list of transferable skills on the preceding pages.• Some of those goals have been discussed in the preceding chapter.• The Permanent Council will explore the possibility of holding informal meetings on the issues mentioned in the two preceding paragraphs.• Could the kinds of experience we have described in the preceding chapters be systematically developed?• The preceding chapters have outlined many of the likely areas of difficulty.• But the world of chapter 26 is not only familiar to us from the preceding chapters of Genesis.