prevent

«prevent» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: go before, come before — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

kind

archaic sense

modern equivalent

go before, come before

part of speech

verb

meaning for a pupil

To come before or get ahead of something; to anticipate it. tree →

how it differs from today

Today it means to stop something from happening; the old sense is "go before", and the sentences use it that way.

examples

• Four boys caught him to prevent the thud. (Peter Pan) tree →
• Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1893) tree →
• This time they could not prevent him overhearing. (Irish Fairy Tales) tree →

primary record

prevent

tests

manual 10.3; corpora 112 (Torah 0, tales 111, Sefer Yetzirah 1); EWT 9; ratio 0.7 (Torah alone 0.0); Wiktionary no archaic label

In the corpora

• Checking the rating on a box, a poster or a streaming page before pressing play prevents many accidents.
• Broken wrists are the most common injury for skaters, and wrist guards help prevent them.
• Bats can carry rabies, a disease that is deadly once symptoms start but can be prevented with injections given soon after a bite.
• Drinking water before and during sport on hot days helps prevent heat exhaustion.
• A clear family rule about buying, such as one purchase a month, prevents most arguments.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «prevent» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.