Previous

How to spell previous

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce previous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does previous mean?

1. adjectiveExisting or occurring before something else in time or order.

Previous in a sentence

• Her previous job was in a busy accountancy firm.

• The report builds on data from the previous quarter.

Where does previous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin praevius, meaning 'going before' or 'leading the way'. That adjective was built from prae, meaning 'before' or 'in front of', and via, meaning 'way' or 'road', the same via that survives in everyday words like 'viaduct' and the travel direction 'via'. So at root, something previous literally 'went along the road ahead' of something else. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, keeping the Latin sense of coming earlier in time or order, and a more informal sense of 'acting too soon' or 'premature' developed later. The spelling trap lies in the smooth middle: the -vi- is pronounced as a soft 'vee', and the unstressed ending settles into -ous rather than -ious or -us.

How the word is built

• pre- (from Latin prae: before)
• vi (from via: way, road)
• -ous (adjective suffix)