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Allin

previously

adverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈpɹiːvi.əsli//
  • United States//ˈpɹivi.əsli//

At an earlier time; already.

adverb

  1. 1

    archaicFirst; beforehand, in advance.

    I must, however, previously remark, that the power of generalizing ideas, to any great extent, is not very common amongst men or women.

  2. 2

    At an earlier time; already.

    The discovery of a previously unknown species had taken place nearly two years previously.

    Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist, declares that to urinate in a spot where a dog has previously done so results in loss of virility.

    In the lawsuit, Giuffre claimed she was forced to have sex with a “large amount of people,” some of whom had not previously been named including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson […].

  3. 3

    Recapitulating the preceding episodes of a series.

Etymology

Etymology tree English previous Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der. Proto-Germanic *līkąder. Proto-Germanic *-līkaz Proto-Germanic *-ê Proto-Germanic *-līkê Proto-West Germanic *-līkē Old English -līċe Middle English -ly English -ly English previously From previous + -ly.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).