Word.ws English Dictionary

preambulate

preambulate verb: to walk before; figuratively, to precede.

Verb

preambulate (third-person singular simple present preambulates, present participle preambulating, simple past and past participle preambulated)

  1. To walk before; figuratively, to precede.
    • “Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates.1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC

Forms of preambulate

third-person singular presentpreambulates
present participlepreambulating
past participlepreambulated
pastpreambulated

Origin of preambulate

From pre- + ambulate, or from Latin praeambulo, praeambulatus.

Questions about preambulate

What does preambulate mean?
Preambulate means to walk before; figuratively, to precede.
What part of speech is preambulate?
Preambulate is a verb.
What is the past tense of preambulate?
The past tense of preambulate is preambulated.

Words near preambulate in the dictionary

  1. preambled
  2. preambles
  3. preambling
  4. preambular
  5. preambulary
  6. preambulate
  7. preambulated
  8. preambulates
  9. preambulating
  10. preambulation
  11. preambulations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preambulate (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: “preambulate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preambulate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.