beforetime

From before +‎ time.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɔːtʌɪm/

beforetime (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Formerly, previously.
   • 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Acts:

     There was a certayne man called Simon, which beforetyme in the same cite, used witchecrafte and bewithched the people, sayinge that he was a man that coulde do greate thinges.

   • 1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “A Ballad of Burdens”, in Poems and Ballads, London: J. C. Hotten, page 145, lines 33–36:

     Thou shalt see
     Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green
     And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be
     And no more as the thing beforetime seen.

• “beforetime”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.