Word.ws English Dictionary

pretheater

pretheater adjective: before attending the theater (especially of drinks or a meal).

Adjective

pretheater (not comparable)

  1. (US) Before attending the theater (especially of drinks or a meal).
    • We picked up our tickets and stopped next door to have a pretheater drink.1999 March 29, Enid Nemy, “Metropolitan Diary”, in New York Times
    • Metrazur, in Grand Central Terminal, throws in a free miniature "suitcase" with its pretheater meal, filled with cookies to munch on during intermission and a $3 MetroCard for the commute to Broadway.2000 February 9, Rick Marin, “Fashionably Early: New York Starts Buzzing Before Dusk”, in New York Times
  2. (US) Preceding the formation of theater.
    • During the early, pretheater period (ca. 700-1350), both religious and secular performing arts prospered.1998, Karen Brazell, Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 4

Examples of pretheater in a sentence

  • If time just doesn't allow for a pretheater restaurant dinner, some places -- Broadway Sal's is one -- can arrange to deliver dinner right to your theater seat.2002 November 3, Bruce McCall, “NEW YORK OBSERVED; For Every Light on Broadway, a Case of Indigestion”, in New York Times:
  • It's not necessary to be an expert on British royals before you see one of Shakespeare's history plays, but a little pretheater preparation never hurts.2005, Janet Ware, Al Davis, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare, Adams Media, →ISBN, page 172:
  • Even though a la carte prices aren't outrageous, we recommend the three-course pretheater menu.2006, Donald Olson, Frommer's London from $95 a Day, 10th Edition, Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 139:

Forms of pretheater

alternative Commonwealthpretheatre

Origin of pretheater

From pre- + theater.

Questions about pretheater

What does pretheater mean?
Pretheater means before attending the theater (especially of drinks or a meal).
How do you use pretheater in a sentence?
If time just doesn't allow for a pretheater restaurant dinner, some places -- Broadway Sal's is one -- can arrange to deliver dinner right to your theater seat.
What part of speech is pretheater?
Pretheater is an adjective.

Words near pretheater in the dictionary

  1. pretexturing
  2. prethalamic
  3. prethalamus
  4. prethcamide
  5. prethe
  6. pretheater
  7. pretheatre
  8. prethee
  9. pretheistic
  10. pretheological
  11. pretheology

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pretheater (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: “pretheater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pretheater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.