pre-exist 
verb [no object] (usually as adjective pre-existing)
1Exist at or from an earlier time: a pre-existing contractual obligation...
- A quick response will also allow the adjuster to determine if the mold is pre-existing or a result of the water damage.
- In the Buddhist view, egolessness is pre-existing, beyond our preconceptions.
- It consists in mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, that tend to follow pre-existing sociological and economic divisions.
1.1 [with object] Exist at or from an earlier time than (something): demons who pre-existed the Great Flood...
- For instance, I vowed in 1995 to listen to no music made after 1970-except for bands that had pre-existed and had released albums before that date.
- For the Platonists, the soul is the human being; the intellect is eternal, and pre-exists and survives the body.
- Language in this poem, as elsewhere in Sexton, pre-exists and dominates the subject.
Derivatives
pre-existence
- We do believe in a pre-existence and that death is not the end of existence.
- Every action performed requires the pre-existence of some social structures which agents draw upon in order to initiate that action, and in doing so reproduce and/or transform them.
- According to their founder Joseph Smith, spirits have three forms: pre-existence, in the human body while alive, and in life after death.
pre-existent
/ adjective ...- More than 50 pre-existent cracks were found when the fragmented track was put together again, the Health and Safety Executive said in a second interim report into the crash.
- It's all about drawing awareness to a pre-existent problem.
- The division of labour cannot take place except within a pre-existent society…