Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or constituting a preface; introductory. synonym: preliminary.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Belonging to a preface; serving as or resembling a preface; introductory.
- Synonyms Introductory, preliminary, precursory, preparatory. See
introduction .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Pertaining to, or of the nature of, a preface; introductory to a book, essay, or discourse.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
introductory ,preliminary , serving as aprelude orpreface .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective serving as an introduction or preface
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word prefatory.
Examples
-
While others seem to have omitted the important detail of everything, what you put forward prefatory is unconstrained and perfectly stated.
-
The question-begging leap of logic here is Posner's interjection of "since," when dealing with the connection between the what's known as the prefatory and operative clauses of the 2nd Amendment.
Judge Richard A. Posner on the D.C. guns case (Heller): "In Defense of Looseness." Ann Althouse 2008
-
By reading the amendment backwards, Scalia begins with an unfettered right "to keep and bear arms" (look, that's what it says!), and, having established such a right, the mere "prefatory" words of the first half of the amendment become nothing more than window dressing.
Adam Freedman: DC v. Heller: Scalia's Decision Will Backfire 2008
-
The landlady first gave a kind of prefatory yell, which was only a prelude of war-whoop, introductory to that which was to follow.
Travels in France during the years 1814-15 Comprising a residence at Paris, during the stay of the allied armies, and at Aix, at the period of the landing of Bonaparte, in two volumes. Archibald Alison 1829
-
"Everything here is true," he proclaims in a prefatory note.
Bright Lights, Flop City Edward Kosner 2011
-
There was no prefatory statement (to my knowledge) saying “These things I believe, now and forever”?
-
Legal Adviser Koh alluded to the importance and, within the executive branch and the State Department, the independent weight of that traditional jurisprudence in the beginning of his speech, in which he made some important — but by the press largely not-understood as being important — prefatory framing remarks about the internal jurisprudence of the executive branch.
-
But last year, and again yesterday morning, I became thoroughly fixated on one strange aspect of those moving, prefatory, deeply private moments in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14: 32 – 42).
Archive 2009-04-01 2009
-
There's the usual prefatory shenanigans with father Pod (Christopher Eccleston) mountain-climbing the stairs to get into a tin of Quality Street, while his bored teenager Arrietty (Aisling Loftus) sulks in her sleeping bag (a hiking sock) and missus Homily (Sharon Horgan) busies herself in a kitchenette fashioned from pencil stubs and bottle tops.
-
For good measure there is even a prefatory skiffle session and musical interludes by Grant Olding.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.