Word.ws English Dictionary

præfatory

præfatory is the obsolete spelling of prefatory.

Meaning of prefatory

Adjective

prefatory (comparative more prefatory, superlative most prefatory)

  1. Serving as a preface or prelude; introductory, preliminary.
    • We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India fifty years since. This prefatory narrative I have already got by me in the form of an old family paper, which relates the necessary particulars on the authority of an eye-witness.1868 January 4 – June 6, [William] Wilkie Collins, “First Period. The Loss of the Diamond (1848). […]”, in The Moonstone. A Romance. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1868...

Forms of præfatory

comparativemore præfatory
superlativemost præfatory

Questions about præfatory

What is præfatory the obsolete spelling of?
Præfatory is the obsolete spelling of prefatory.

Words near præfatory in the dictionary

  1. præexist
  2. præface
  3. præfaced
  4. præfaces
  5. præfacing
  6. præfatory
  7. præfect
  8. præfecture
  9. præfectures
  10. præfer
  11. præfer'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: præfatory (page history and authors); prefatory (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “præfatory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pr%C3%A6fatory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.