an advance

基本解释

Smoking is an advance contract.
吸烟是一项事先合同。
You might imagine that Western powers would welcome such an advance.
也许你会误认为西方势力会欢迎这样的发展。
The money was a down-payment for doing, a bit more formally, the kind of job that TSF already specialised in: acting as an advance guard for big, UN-managed operations.
这笔钱是给TSF用于其行动——更正式地说，就是TSF所专注的那类援助工作，即成为由联合国所管理的各项重要任务的先锋——的预付金。

Helmand Province Governor Gulab Mangal said an Emergency staff member received $500,000 as an advance payment for killing him.
And in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this progression was viewed as an advance, which is not very surprising because the whole theory was put forward by scholars who were basically western monotheists.
在十八十九世纪，这个演变,被认为是一种进步，这并不奇怪,因为整个理论基本上都是由,西方一神论者提出的。
耶鲁公开课 - 旧约导论课程节选
the first was it didn't bother with the established baseline of what percentage of teenage girls had received an unwelcome sexual advance in the day to day actions with people.
第一个问题是,它并没有涉及到底量度的基准,到底这些十几岁的女孩子们,在白天与人正常交往的时候,所受到的性挑逗的比例为多少。
麻省理工公开课 - 媒体、教育、市场课程节选

This is an advance of Afghan forces taking full responsibility for security in 2014.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron Hold a Press Conference