Is there a difference between 'prior' and 'previous'?

Posted by Lewis on June 04, 2004

In Reply to: Is there a difference between 'prior' and 'previous'? posted by Ramakrishna on June 04, 2004

: Hi all,

: Is there any difference between 'prior experience' and 'previous experience'?

: I was wondering how would one differentiate between one's experience that was there some time in the past as opposed to an experience that one has/had just before doing what he is currently doing!

In a way, there is a bit of tautology there - 'experience' is in the past - 'prior' and 'previous' both mean 'before' - However, usually 'prior experience' is experience of the same type.
if a job required experience of working with horses then you might put working with dogs down as 'previous experience', but only working with horses as 'prior' experience.

Hope that helps.