Word.ws English Dictionary

prelaps

prelaps is the plural of prelap.

Meaning of prelap

Noun

prelap (countable and uncountable, plural prelaps)

  1. A film editing technique in which the dialogue from the next scene precedes the cut, and the beginning of the dialogue is heard in the outgoing scene.
    • Some aspects of the editing were groundbreaking: In his book “Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice” (2001), Don Fairservice pointed out that “Stagecoach” contained one of the earliest uses — maybe even the first — of the now-commonplace technique called a prelap, in which as one scene ends...2022 October 29, Gavin Edwards, “Overlooked No More: Dorothy Spencer, Film Editor Sought Out by Big Directors”, in The New York Times

Questions about prelaps

What is prelaps the plural of?
Prelaps is the plural of prelap.

Words near prelaps in the dictionary

  1. prelanding
  2. prelanguage
  3. prelanguages
  4. prelap
  5. prelaparoscopic
  6. prelaps
  7. prelapsarian
  8. prelarvae
  9. prelarval
  10. prelaryngeal
  11. prelate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prelaps (page history and authors); prelap (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: “prelaps.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prelaps. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.