Word.ws English Dictionary

precrime

precrime adjective: before a crime.

Adjective

precrime (not comparable)

  1. Before a crime.
    • The precrime actions of the murderers in the days and hours before they killed provide clues to their mental states at the time of the murders.1995, Robert K. Ressler, Ann Wolbert Burgess, John E. Douglas, Sexual homicide: patterns and motives, page 65

Noun

precrime (countable and uncountable, plural precrimes)

  1. (countable) The act that is close to, or is a precursor of a crime.
    • Held captive by society against their own free wills, the precogs are destined to foretell disturbing precrimes. Yet these precrimes will be committed by persons who are exercising their own free wills.2002, Ethix: The Bulletin of the Institute for Business, Technology & Ethics, Issues 22-38
  2. (uncountable) The tendency in criminal justice systems to focus on crimes not yet committed.

Forms of precrime

Adjective
alternative formpre-crime
Noun
pluralprecrimes

Origin of precrime

From pre- + crime.

Questions about precrime

What does precrime mean?
Precrime means before a crime.
What part of speech is precrime?
Precrime can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near precrime in the dictionary

  1. precreating
  2. precreative
  3. precredit
  4. precremation
  5. precricoid
  6. precrime
  7. precrimes
  8. precrisis
  9. precristid
  10. precritical
  11. precruise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: precrime (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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