Meaning: The ratio of the output to the input of any system. Classified under: Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas. Hypernyms (efficiency is a kind of...): ratio (the relative magnitudes of two quantities (usually expressed as a quotient))
uk â /ËÃ¦n.tiËsiË.dÉnt/ us â /ËÃ¦n.tÌ¬ÉËsiË.dÉnt/. âº formal someone or something existing or happening before, especially as the cause or origin of something existing or happening later: Charles Babbage's mechanical calculating engines were the antecedents of the modern computer. Many people feel a great curiosity to find out about their antecedents. âº specialized language a word or phrase that a pronoun refers back to: In the sentence He picked a book off the shelf and handed it to Sally, book is the antecedent of it.
The antecedentâthat is, the noun to which the participle refersâmust be clear to the readers in order for them to understand what's being said. Otherwise, an action may be subscribed to the wrong player, such as flitting to athletes. That's called a dangling participle, because it's left dangling without a clear antecedent. Just as with compound subject-verb agreement when or links two or more subjects (see above, #9), proximity shows the link between a participle and its antecedent in English.