Definition of Preliminary

Preliminary

Introductory; previous; preceding the main discourse or business; prefatory; as, preliminary observations to a discourse or book; preliminary articles to a treaty; preliminary measures; preliminary examinations.

That which precedes the main discourse, work, design, or business; something introductory or preparatory; as, the preliminaries to a negotiation or duel; to take one's preliminaries the year before entering college.

Related Definitions:

As, Before, Book, Business, College, Design, Discourse, Duel, Entering, Introductory, Main, Negotiation, One, Or, Preceding, Prefatory, Preliminaries, Preliminary, Preparatory, Previous, Something, Take, That, The, To, Treaty, Which, Work, Year

Preliminary Quotations

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.
Paul Tillich

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.
Lewis Mumford

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
John Maynard Keynes

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.
Ezra Pound

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.
Albert Pike

The physical fabric of the world had to be such as to enable that ten billion year preliminary evolution to produce the raw materials of life. Without it there would not have been the chemical materials to allow life to evolve here on earth.
John Polkinghorne

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.
Muhammed Iqbal

This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.
David Kay

I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.'
Michael Arad

If we wish to discuss knowledge in the most highly developed contemporary society, we must answer the preliminary question of what methodological representation to apply to that society.
Jean-Francois Lyotard

On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act.
Albert Bushnell Hart

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to "discover" a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.
Warren E. Burger

The dance commonly begins about the middle of the afternoon or later, after sundown. When it begins in the afternoon, there is always an intermission of an hour or two for supper. The preliminary painting and dressing is usually the work of about two hours.
James Mooney

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work.
Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

My life as a working theorist began three months after this preliminary study and background reading, when Oscar gently nudged me toward working on a particular problem.
Rudolph A. Marcus

If I have the choice of traveling to Russia, India or New Zealand alone for a week for preliminary discussions or to spend that week with my family, I routinely choose my family.
Olafur Eliasson

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.
Georges Cuvier

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
Edward Weston

Cosmoe is nearing the stage where I would feel comfortable doing a preliminary release aimed at developers.
Bill Hayden

More Preliminary Quotations

Preliminary Translations

preliminary in Dutch is voorafgaand, preliminair
preliminary in Italian is introduttivo
preliminary in Portuguese is preliminar

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