The word 以前 is formed through the combination of two characters: 以, which originally conveyed the sense of "to take" or "to use", and 前, meaning "front" or "ahead". When fused, they create a temporal concept by metaphorically "taking a point in time as the front", thereby establishing all the time that lies ahead of that point, that is, the period "before" it. Thus, its formation is a conceptual blend where a spatial directional term (前) is anchored by 以 to express a relational idea of preceding time.