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.
An antecedent is a word for which a pronoun stands. (ante = before) The pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number. Rule: A singular pronoun must replace a singular noun; a plural pronoun must replace a plural noun. Thus, the mechanics of the sentence above look like this: Here are nine pronoun-antecedent agreement rules. These rules are related to the rules found in subject-verb agreement.