prior

B2 · Upper Intermediate Formal

adv. used with 'to' to mean before a specific time or event.

adv. functioning as a compound preposition when followed by 'to', indicating temporal precedence.

“Please sign these documents prior to your appointment on Tuesday.”

“Prior to the implementation of the new software, all staff members must complete a mandatory training module.”

C2 · Proficiency Countable noun Religion Formal

n. a man who is the head of a religious house, like a monastery.

n. a monk who is the head of a religious house or second in authority to an abbot.

“The prior led the monks into the chapel for their morning prayers.”

“The prior was responsible for the daily administration of the monastery, ensuring that both spiritual and temporal duties were fulfilled.”

C1 · Advanced Plural noun Law American English · Informal

n. a person's past crimes or times they were arrested.

n. a previous criminal conviction or arrest on an individual's record.

“The police checked his file and saw he had several priors for theft.”

“The judge took the defendant's lack of priors into account when deciding on a more lenient sentence.”

C2 · Proficiency Countable noun Mathematics Technical · Academic

n. an initial guess or calculation made before new information is collected.

n. a prior probability distribution representing the likelihood of an outcome before new evidence is taken into account.

“The researcher updated the prior after seeing the results of the first test.”

“In Bayesian inference, the prior is combined with the likelihood function to determine the posterior distribution.”