George W. Bush was the predecessor to Barack Obama as President of the United States.

That word predecessor sounds like pre-deceased. Does that mean that once upon a time someone had to die before the new guy got the job?

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The word predecessor has always meant the “person who went before,” not only in English, but also in French and in Latin earlier on. It wasn’t mandatory that a predecessor had to be dead to qualify as a predecessor.

It’s just that deceased and predecessor, as well as the word succeed all evolved out of the same earlier root word.

In Indo-European the word ked meant “to go.”

By the time this word worked its way up to Latin it was cedere that also meant “to go.”

In Latin they ganged together two words de cedere forming a word that meant “to go away.”

That’s why people who have died are referred to as deceased; it’s a polite way of saying they’re dead, they’ve gone away; departed.

Thus in order for Barack Obama to take the job as President George Bush had to go away from the job first. So predecessor literally means “before, has gone away.”

Sometimes we hear that an incumbent is succeeded by the new guy. For example Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush as President of the United States

Most of the time though when people use the word succeed they mean to “do well” or to “achieve a goal.”

How is this “do well” word succeed related to one person succeeding another in a job?

That same “to go” root fits into succeed. In this case though the prefix means “near” so to succeed literally means “to go near.”

To go near could be (and was) taken to mean “to go next to.”

From this the word succeed had a meaning of process and for some time in English both the words succeed and success denoted the next step in a continuum without carrying any meaning as to whether that step was a good one or a bad one.

It was a little over 500 years ago that good outcomes began more and more to be associated with these words.