Word.ws English Dictionary

presignal

presignal adjective: before a signal.

Adjective

presignal (not comparable)

  1. Before a signal.
    • Another experiment showed that presignal information about which of two frequencies was to be presented aids detection considerably, but such information does not entirely eliminate the decrement.1959, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics, Quarterly Progress Report - Volumes 52-53, page 199
    • Mean shocks per minute for each of the four Ss during a 1-rnin presignal period, during successive 20sec of signal presentation, and during a 1-min postsignal period.1971, Psychonomic Science - Volume 25, page 149

Noun

presignal (plural presignals)

  1. A signal that occurs before some occurrence, as a warning or to trigger an automatic preparation.
    • A presignal gets the moving cars back of the intersection off to the same flying start as the stopped lead vehicles. Von Stein has also used presignals in Dusseldorf and in other parts of Germany to create "time islands" for streetcars that must stop where there is no room for loading islands.1965, Robert Colborn, Modern Science and Technology, page 297
    • In this case, a presignal from the ATS could be interfaced with the elevator controls for that purpose.2011, Peter M. Curtis, Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment, →ISBN

Examples of presignal in a sentence

  • Signals to subjects to forget presignal items completely eliminated the proactive interference postsignal items would normally suffer from the presignal items.2000, Angela Vanessa Knox, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Inhibitory Processes During Directed Forgetting:
  • Therefore, a presignal area was determined based upon thresholds and/or indicator values, whether positive or negative.2006, Gregory Morris, Candlestick Charting Explained, →ISBN:
  • A presignal ahead of the streetcar stop allows the streetcar to pass into the unloading zone only after all the nonrail-bound traffic has left.2012, Thomas R. Horton, Traffic Control: Theory and Instrumentation., →ISBN:

Forms of presignal

pluralpresignals

Origin of presignal

From pre- + signal.

Questions about presignal

What does presignal mean?
Presignal means before a signal.
How do you use presignal in a sentence?
Signals to subjects to forget presignal items completely eliminated the proactive interference postsignal items would normally suffer from the presignal items.
What part of speech is presignal?
Presignal can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near presignal in the dictionary

  1. presift
  2. presifted
  3. presifting
  4. presifts
  5. presign
  6. presignal
  7. presignals
  8. presignature
  9. presignatures
  10. presigned
  11. presignification

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: presignal (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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