avant

Abbreviated from avant-garde.

avant (plural avants)

1. (obsolete) The front of an army; the vanguard.

• van

• “avant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1914), “avant”, in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, revised edition, volumes I (A–C), New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Inherited from Late Latin ab ante (“before, in front of”).

• IPA^(key): (Central) [əˈβan]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic) [əˈvant]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [aˈvant]

avant

1. forward, ahead, onward

   Synonym: endavant

   Antonym: endarrere

• abans

• “avant”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “avant”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025
• “avant” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “avant” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Inherited from Late Latin ab ante.

avant (ORB, broad)

1. before

avant (ORB, broad)

1. before, ahead of

• avantâjo

• avanciér

• avant in DicoFranPro: Dictionnaire Français/Francoprovençal – on dicofranpro.llm.umontreal.ca
• avant in Lo trèsor Arpitan – on arpitan.eu

Inherited from Middle French avant, from Old French avant (“before, prior in time, forward”), from Late Latin ab ante (“before, in front of”), from Latin ab (“from”) + ante (“before”).

• IPA^(key): /a.vɑ̃/

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• Homophones: avants, avent, Avent

avant

1. beforehand; earlier

   Je l'avais fait avant. ― I had done it beforehand.

avant

1. before (in time)

   Antonym: après

   Elle est arrivé un jour avant moi. ― She arrived one day before me.

   Il faut se laver avant de manger. ― You must wash before eating.

   Tais-toi avant que je ne te tue. ― Shut up before I kill you.

2. before (in space), in front of, ahead of

   Antonym: après

• avancer

• Haitian Creole: anvan

avant m (plural avants)

1. front

   l'avant d'une voiture ― The front of a car.

2. (sports) forward

• “avant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• vanta

From Old French avant, from Late Latin ab ante (“before, in front of”), from Latin ab (“from”) + ante (“before”).

avant

1. (Jersey) beforehand; earlier

avant

1. (Jersey) before
   • 1903, Edgar MacCulloch, “Proverbs, Weather Sayings, etc.”, in Guernsey Folk Lore‎^[1], page 533:

     Six s'maïnes avant Noué, et six s'maïnes après, les nits sont les pûs longues, et le jours les pûs freds.

     Six weeks before Christmas and six weeks after, the nights are the longest and the days the coldest.

• avant-hièr (“day before yesterday”)

avant m (plural avants)

1. (Jersey, nautical) bow

• avaunt

From Late Latin ab ante (“before, in front of”), from Latin ab (“from”) + ante (“before”).

avant

1. beforehand; earlier

avant

1. before

• avancier

• French: avant
• Norman: avant
• → Middle English: avaunt
  • English: avaunt

• avon (Sursilvan)
• avànt (Sutsilvan)
• aunz, avaunt (Puter)

From Late Latin ab ante, from Latin ab + ante.

avant

1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Surmiran, Vallader) before, beforehand
2. (Rumantsch Grischun, Surmiran, Vallader) ago