What does antedated mean?
"Antedated" is the past-tense form of the verb "antedate", which carries two related senses. In its most familiar legal and commercial use, to have been antedated means to bear a date earlier than the actual date of writing or signing — as when a contract or cheque is deliberately backdated. This sense often implies intent, sometimes innocent bookkeeping but potentially forgery, which gives the word a slightly suspicious colour in everyday usage. In a second, more neutral sense found in historical and scholarly writing, something that antedates another thing simply existed or occurred before it in time. The word derives from Latin roots: "ante" meaning "before" and "data" meaning "given", literally "given beforehand". It belongs to formal registers and appears most often in discussions of documents, records, archaeology, and chronology, where precision about dates matters.
verb (past tense of 'antedate')The past-tense form of the verb 'antedate', meaning to assign a date to something earlier than its actual date, or to precede something in time.
- To give something a date earlier than its true date (as on a document or cheque).
- To exist or occur at an earlier time than something else.
"The lawyer discovered that the contract had been antedated by two weeks."
"The deed had been antedated so that it appeared to transfer ownership before the seller's death."
"The castle's foundations antedate the Norman conquest by nearly a century."
To antedate a check is to write yesterday's date on it today — and doing it fraudulently has landed more than one forger in court.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of antedated
"Antedate" entered English in the early 17th century, formed from the Latin prefix "ante-" ("before") combined with "date", ultimately from Latin "data", the feminine past participle of "dare" ("to give"). The same "ante-" root produces English cognates such as "antediluvian", "antechamber", and "anterior". The verb originally meant both "to precede in time" and "to affix an earlier date", and both senses survive today.
Related word forms
How antedated is actually used
Formal register, common in legal, historical, and archival contexts. The sense meaning 'to falsely assign an earlier date' carries connotations of forgery or manipulation, while the neutral temporal sense ('to precede') is standard in scholarly writing.
Easily confused with antedated
'Predate' means simply to exist or occur earlier in time, while 'antedate' often implies deliberately assigning an earlier date than is true.
'Postdate' means to assign a later date than the actual one or to come afterward, the opposite of 'antedate'.