avant

In a sentence

• Je suis arrivé avant le dîner.

  I arrived before dinner.

  Here, 'avant' is used as a preposition to indicate the time preceding an event, which is the dinner in this case.

• Il s'est assis avant moi dans la salle.

  He sat down before me in the room.

  In this example, 'avant' functions as a preposition to indicate temporal order precedence of one person over another.

• Le jour d'avant, il avait oublié ce document.

  The day before, he had forgotten this document.

  Here, 'avant' modifies 'jour' to form a specific phrase meaning 'the day before', relating to a point in time preceding a referenced day.