before vs after
Definitions
adverb
- at or in the front
- earlier in time; previously
Examples
Ask for an aged standing rib roast from the forequarter, trimmed and chined; bring to room temperature before roasting.
Before we did anything we wrote and rewrote the script until we felt what we had got written down was a really good story.
Before you know it, all the Sandy Clarks and Billy Starks doing the media rounds are back in business until the next time they are given their jotters for failing to meet fans' expectations.
Definitions
adverb
- happening at a time subsequent to a reference time
- behind or in the rear
adjective
- located farther aft
Examples
She was all cold and bedraggled after falling into the river.
It might as well be closed, because in many American hospitals you're simply shooed from the windowsill after you've been nursed back to health (usually in 72 hours or less), and you're expected to "fly" on your own.
My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road — “a dry road, Emma my dear,” my poor Lirriper says to me, “where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma” — and this led to his running through a good deal and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards.
