The superior of a priory, and next below an abbot in dignity.

a chief magistrate, as in the republic of Florence in the middle ages.

The Prior is the leader of the local community or house*. Known as the praepositus by St. Augustine, he is regarded in the Augustinian tradition as the "first among equals" with authority, along with his Council,* to make decisions in the name of the community. The Prior differs, for example, from an Abbot in the Benedictine tradition in the limits of his authority and his term of office.

Preceding in the order of time; former; antecedent; anterior; previous; as, a prior discovery; prior obligation; -- used elliptically in cases like the following: he lived alone [in the time] prior to his marriage.

First, precedent, or superior in the order of cognition, reason or generality, origin, development, rank, etc.

a prior conviction; -- said of an accused criminal.

The prior probability distribution - The prior is the probability distribution over the parameter space, prior to seeing the data. The prior represents your prior belief or prior assumptions about the probabilities of different parameter values before you have analyzed the data. The prior is combined with the likelihood to yield the posterior. In most applications of BEAST the prior is either uniform or a coalescent prior on the tree shape.

a probability distribution over a set of distributions which expresses a belief in the probability that some distribution is the distribution generating the data

In the television science fiction series, Stargate SG-1, a Prior is a highly evolved human, genetically engineered by the Ori. They apparently originate from outside the Milky Way galaxy.

earlier in time

A title insurance policy or abstract that we or another title company have already issued on a piece of property.

Prior is a title, derived from the Latin adjective for 'earlier, first', with several notable uses.

PRIVILEGES* PUBLIC* RAW RENAME

Something that came before.

See Prior Authorized Sale.