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English
Adverb
before-hand (not comparable)
- Archaic form of beforehand.
1594, Richard Hooker, “Book 1”, in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, London: John Walthoe et al, published 1782, page 5:[…] God did not work as a necessary, but a voluntary agent, intending before-hand, and decreeing with himself, that which did outwardly proceed from him.
1654, John Bramhall, A Just Vindication of the Church of England from the Unjust Aspersion of Criminal Schism:But the practice of dispensations was much more foul: witness their Penitentiary Tax, wherein a man might see the price of his sin before-hand; their common nundination of pardons, their absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance […]
1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 2, lines 638–641:For to subscribe, unsight, unseen, / To an unknown Church-discipline, / What is it else, but before-hand / T'engage, and after understand?
1670, John Milton, The History of Britain, that Part especially now called England, Book II:Agricola, who perceav'd that the noiſe of this defeat had alſo in the Province deſirous of novelty, ſtirr'd up new expectations, reſolves to be before-hand with the danger: […]
1671, John Milton, “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy”, in Paradise Regain’d, to which is added Samson Agonistes, London: John Starkey, page 4:And though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an Epistle; in behalf of this Tragedy coming forth after the antient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much before-hand may be Epistl’d; that Chorus is here introduc’d after the Greek manner, not antient only but modern, and still in use among the Italians.
1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VI, in Pride and Prejudice: , volume I, London: for T Egerton, , →OCLC, page 47:Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least.