Precedence is the right to come before others. Take precedence, order of precedence, give precedence to.
It settles who goes first, which matters in ceremony, in law and in queues. The order of precedence is a formal list in states with a court or a constitution. In computing, operator precedence decides which part of an expression is evaluated first, and getting it wrong is a classic bug. Note the difference from precedent, which is a prior case.
1nounprecedenceThe right to come before others.
“On a building site, safety always takes precedence over speed.”
2nounorderThe order in which parts of an expression are evaluated.
“In maths, multiplication takes precedence over addition, so you do it first.”
precedence is a right to go first.
Middle French précédence comes from Latin praecedere, to go before — prae plus cedere, to go. Precede, concede and cede come from the same going.
Middle French
précédence — the state of preceding, anteriority
English, today
precedence
From Middle French précédence (“the state of preceding, anteriority”). Morphologically precede + ence.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA