Word.ws English Dictionary

precontact

precontact adjective: before contact was established (especially with an indigenous people).

Adjective

precontact (not comparable)

  1. Before contact was established (especially with an indigenous people).
    • the precontact period

Noun

precontact (countable and uncountable, plural precontacts)

  1. An instance of contacting somebody in advance.
    • Precontacts may be less effective with homogeneous groups than with samples involving the general population.1979, Arthur V. Ciervo, Using the Mass Media (issues 5-8, page 63)
    • Reviewing 12 studies of precontacting or advance notice to respondents, Linsky (1975) concluded that all precontacts by letter, postcard, telephone, or earlier personal contact increased response rates, with the telephone precontact being the most effective.2015, H. J. Hsia, Mass Communications Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Approach, page 169

Verb

precontact (third-person singular simple present precontacts, present participle precontacting, simple past and past participle precontacted)

  1. To contact somebody in advance.
    • Reviewing 12 studies of precontacting or advance notice to respondents, Linsky (1975) concluded that all precontacts by letter, postcard, telephone, or earlier personal contact increased response rates, with the telephone precontact being the most effective.2015, H. J. Hsia, Mass Communications Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Approach, page 169

Forms of precontact

Adjective
alternative formpre-contact
Noun
pluralprecontacts
Verb
third-person singular presentprecontacts
present participleprecontacting
past participleprecontacted
pastprecontacted

Origin of precontact

From pre- + contact.

Questions about precontact

What does precontact mean?
Precontact means before contact was established (especially with an indigenous people).
What part of speech is precontact?
Precontact can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.

Words near precontact in the dictionary

  1. preconsumed
  2. preconsumer
  3. preconsumerist
  4. preconsumes
  5. preconsuming
  6. precontact
  7. precontacted
  8. precontacting
  9. precontacts
  10. precontemplation
  11. precontemplative

Source and license

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