Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Serving as a prelude; introductory; indicative of the future; premonitory.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of the nature of a prelude; introductory; indicating that something of a like kind is to follow.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Acting as a
prelude ;preliminary .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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So that as it cometh to pass in massive bodies, that they have certain trepidations and waverings before they fix and settle, so it seemeth that by the providence of God this monarchy, before it was to settle in your majesty and your generations (in which I hope it is now established for ever), it had these prelusive changes and varieties.
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Both kiddies stood -- and with prelusive spar, [2]
Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896]
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His prelusive sentiments are sometimes far-fetched, and converge not with a natural declination into the focus of epigram.
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How came it that no aurora of early light, no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before this wild levanter of change?
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844
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What makes the matter worse is, that this happened at the very opening of the diet, and whilst the grand prelusive symphony of the whole hidden people was in full burst.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844
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In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means it were meant simply to justify the undertaking.
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His prelusive sentiments are sometimes far-fetched, and converge not with a natural declination into the focus of epigram.
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During an entire generation they furnished the arena for the prelusive strife of that war.
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Jont had begun to tune their fiddles, and the first prelusive snapping of strings at once awakened Heman's nerves to a pleasant tingling; he was excited at the nearness of the coming joy.
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At Raritan and New Brunswick, in New Jersey, and elsewhere, there had been prelusive gleams of dawn.
yarb commented on the word prelusive
...ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time...
- Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 27
July 24, 2008