People who held a job or position before someone else, or things that came before other similar things.
From Latin 'praedecessor'—'prae' (before) and 'decessor' (one who departs). It originally meant someone who left office or died in their role, and over time came to simply mean 'the person who came before.'
In medieval times, kings would often deliberately destroy records of their predecessors' reigns to erase them from history—a practice called 'damnatio memoriae'—so sometimes predecessors were literally forgotten on purpose.
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