Prior

His prior residence was smaller than his current one.

I had no prior knowledge you were coming.

Since therefore 'tis poſſible for all objects to become cauſes or effects to each other, it may be proper to fix ſome general rules, by vvhich vve may knovv vvhen they really are ſo. […] 2. The cauſe must be prior to the effect.

Lady Marney, duly warned of the impending catastrophe, was experiencing all the advantages of prior information.

"As these busts in the block of marble," though Miriam, "so does our individual fate exist in the limestone of time. We fancy that we carve it out; but its ultimate shape is prior to all our action."

These reconstructions took place with so great ease and rapidity at Abbeville, […] that there is now scarce vestige left of any building prior to the fifteenth century.

[T]he Mayor, […] seemed to have schooled himself into a course of strict mechanical rightness towards this woman of prior claim, at any expense to the later one, and to his own sentiments.

The doctor had known three months prior.

From the opening shots of the anonymous young Winterfell boy rushing to catch a glimpse of Jon Snow and Queen Daenerys Targaryen, hearkening back to those moments of the very first episode in which Arya rushed to do the same with an approaching King Robert Baratheon, the series is calling back to its beginning, suggesting (at least for now) that the wheel continues to turn, sending us back into a pattern begun seven seasons prior.

During each of these touchpoints, I'm asking myself where and how my thesis on each holding could be wrong. I'm checking each data point as it comes in against my priors. I'm comparing management behavior to what I would be doing if I were in their shoes.

The votes are in, and our priors are confirmed. The truth is that midterms are nearly as predictable as death and taxes: The party that controls the White House always loses and often badly at that.

And a little later we get the routine report on his prints from Washington, and he's got a prior back in Indiana, attempted hold-up six years ago.

It is not yet an hundred yere a goe, ſince that ſame mayſter doctour was butler in the ſame houſe, whereof I was maiſter and praiour: […]

[I]t hath appertained to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for the space of four hundred years or thereabouts to have spiritual jurisdiction over all your Grace's subjects dwelling within the provinces; […] in the meantime of vacation the same privilege resteth in the churches of Canterbury and York; and is executed by the prior, dean and chapter of the said churches; […]

[F]irſt of all among themſelves of the ancienteſt they chuſe three heads or chiefs vvhich they call Priors; and alſo of the youngeſt among them they chuſe tvvo vvho perform the office of Secretaries. The Priors ſit dovvn, having before them a table upon vvhich are placed tvvo balloting boxes of that ſort that are uſed in the Great Council; in one of vvhich are put 40 balls, marked vvith a certain mark, that no deceit may be uſed. The reſt of the 41 ſit alſo dovvn, each vvhere he pleaſes. […] Then they are called one by one before the three Priors, and each one vvrites in his Schedule the name of him vvhom he vvould have to be Duke, and leaves it upon the table.