Word.ws English Dictionary

prevaile

prevaile is the obsolete spelling of prevail.

Meaning of prevail

Verb

prevail (third-person singular simple present prevails, present participle prevailing, simple past and past participle prevailed)

  1. (intransitive) To be superior in strength, dominance, influence, or frequency; to have or gain the advantage over others; to have the upper hand; to outnumber others.
    • Red colour prevails in the Canadian flag.
  2. (intransitive) To triumph; to be victorious.
    • There are a number of SCPs and tales that look at potential apocalypses, but rarely with such totality as SCP-2935, a parallel dimension in which death prevailed.2019 January 14, “Exploring the SCP Foundation: SCP-2935 - O, Death” (0:36 from the start), in The Exploring Series, archived from the original on 25 Mar 2023
  3. (intransitive) To be current, widespread, or predominant; to have currency or prevalence.
    • In his day and age, such practices prevailed all over Europe.
  4. (intransitive, often) To succeed in persuading or inducing.
    • I prevailed on him to wait.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To avail.

Forms of prevaile

third-person singular presentprevailes
present participleprevailing
past participleprevailed
pastprevailed

Questions about prevaile

What is prevaile the obsolete spelling of?
Prevaile is the obsolete spelling of prevail.

Words near prevaile in the dictionary

  1. prevail
  2. prevail upon
  3. prevail'd
  4. prevailance
  5. prevailancy
  6. prevaile
  7. prevailed
  8. prevailed upon
  9. prevailency
  10. prevailent
  11. prevailer

Source and license

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