Word.ws English Dictionary

prenex

US/ˈpɹi.nɛks/

prenex adjective: of a formula, having all of its quantifiers at the beginning.

Adjective

prenex (not comparable)

  1. Of a formula, having all of its quantifiers at the beginning.
    • "We say that #92;phi is universal iff it can be written in prenex form — i.e. with all quantifiers at the beginning — using only universal quantifiers."1999, Neil Immerman, Descriptive Complexity, New York: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, page 12

Noun

prenex (plural prenexes)

  1. The initial part of a prenex formula where all of the formula's bound variables are bound by logical quantifiers.
    • ∀x.∃y. is the prenex of the formula ∀x.∃y.P(x,y)

Forms of prenex

pluralprenexes

Origin of prenex

Borrowed from Late Latin praenexus (“bound up in front”), from Latin prae- (“before”) and nexus, past participle of nectō (“to bind”).

Words formed from prenex

Questions about prenex

What does prenex mean?
Prenex means of a formula, having all of its quantifiers at the beginning.
What part of speech is prenex?
Prenex can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce prenex?
Prenex is pronounced /ˈpɹi.nɛks/ (US).

Words near prenex in the dictionary

  1. preneural
  2. preneurogenic
  3. preneutralize
  4. preneutralized
  5. prenewtonian
  6. prenex
  7. prenex normal form
  8. prenexes
  9. Prenger
  10. Prengers
  11. prenidal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prenex (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:

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