Word.ws English Dictionary

præliminary

præliminary is the obsolete spelling of preliminary.

Meaning of preliminary

Noun

preliminary (plural preliminaries)

  1. A preparation for a main matter; an introduction.
    • In the Chinese novels, often of a very literary character, devoted to masculine love, it seems that all the preliminaries and transports of normal love are to be found, while physical union may terminate the scene.1927, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6)
  2. Any of a series of sports events that determine the finalists.
  3. A relatively minor contest that precedes a major one, especially in boxing.

See all 4 meanings of preliminary

Forms of præliminary

pluralpræliminaries

Questions about præliminary

What is præliminary the obsolete spelling of?
Præliminary is the obsolete spelling of preliminary.

Words near præliminary in the dictionary

  1. præjudices
  2. præjudicing
  3. prælection
  4. prælections
  5. præliminaries
  6. præliminary
  7. prælude
  8. præludes
  9. præludia
  10. præludium
  11. prælusive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: præliminary (page history and authors); preliminary (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: “præliminary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pr%C3%A6liminary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.