Word.ws English Dictionary

pregame

pregame noun: a social gathering of friends who get together to drink before going out to a party or a sports game, in order to generate a slight feeling of intoxication before going out for the night.

Noun

pregame (plural pregames)

  1. A social gathering of friends who get together to drink before going out to a party or a sports game, in order to generate a slight feeling of intoxication before going out for the night.
    • When the Brooklyn Nets are in town, there are office parties and tieless finance guys and pregame groups, like the one that showed up Wednesday night to celebrate the reunion of two old friends with a meal and some basketball (the Miami Heat, led by LeBron James, later trounced the home team).2013 February 2, Alan Feuer, “A Pregame Reunion in Brooklyn”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 29 Mar 2023
    • P: And what was going on there at Griffin Suite?
      Julia: A pregame.2019, Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers, page 194
  2. A television show preceding a sports game wherein commentators discuss that game.
    • "Hey sport, do you want to watch the pregame?" asked Justin.2006, Greg Giesen, Ask Dr. Mac: Take the Journey to Authentic Leadership, page 43
    • Izzy had gone to the bar to catch the pregame.2007, Theo Gangi, BANg BAnG, page 26
  3. (figuratively) A period of time before an important event.
    • You can see the entire thing on SpaceX’s website. It looks long—45 whole minutes!—but there’s really only a 20-minute pregame, and then the rocket takes off, and then it flies and the stages separate and then it lands.2015 December 23, Robinson Meyer, “When a Rocket Launch Is a Cultural Event”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2016

Adjective

pregame (not comparable)

  1. Taking place before, or in preparation for, a sporting event or other game.
    • Enough already with the predictions. Enough with the pregame analysis. Enough with the sidebars. Enough with the practices. Let the battle begin!2012 March 14, Andrew Cohen, “Will the Affordable Care Act Argument Be Worth the Hype?”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 10 Jun 2015

Verb

pregame (third-person singular simple present pregames, present participle pregaming, simple past and past participle pregamed)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To consume alcohol prior to an event.
    • In some cases, pregaming is a precursor to the “real” drinking that will take place later that night at house parties or bars, but sometimes students pregame in order to get drunk before heading out to social activities[…]2013, Karen G. Weiss, Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community, UPNE, →ISBN, page 57
    • After pregaming, Julia heads to the Kappa Alpha party, where she discovers an unopened bottle of vodka in the basement.2019, Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers, page 195
    Synonyms:
    preload, pre-drink

pregame meaning in Tamil

pregame in Tamil

முன் ஆயத்தம்

Synonyms of pregame

Forms of pregame

Noun
pluralpregames
alternative formpre-game
Verb
third-person singular presentpregames
present participlepregaming
past participlepregamed
pastpregamed

Origin of pregame

From pre- + game.

Questions about pregame

What does pregame mean?
Pregame means a social gathering of friends who get together to drink before going out to a party or a sports game, in order to generate a slight feeling of intoxication before going out for the night.
What is pregame in Tamil?
Pregame in Tamil is முன் ஆயத்தம். See Pregame meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is pregame?
Pregame can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
What is the plural of pregame?
The plural of pregame is pregames.

Words near pregame in the dictionary

  1. pregage
  2. pregaged
  3. pregages
  4. pregaging
  5. pregalactic
  6. pregame
  7. pregamed
  8. pregames
  9. pregametic
  10. pregaming
  11. preganglionic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pregame (page history and authors); pregame (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pregame.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pregame.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pregame. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.