PRELUDE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Prelude

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/prˈeɪlˌud/ Listen

Prelude

noun

Something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows. Synonyms: overture, preliminary. "Drinks were the overture to dinner"

Music that precedes a fugue or introduces an act in an opera.

verb

(past & past part. preluded; pres. part. preluding)

Serve as a prelude or opening to.

Play as a prelude.

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Etymology of 'Prelude'

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"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books

... prelude, pours forth his voice at once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as it loses itself ...

— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... and the Chieftain, for his own vengeance and the intimidation of justice, resolved upon an exemplary punishment. He waylaid the Lord of Session, emptied his pockets, killed his horses, broke his coach in pieces, and having bound his lackeys, drowned them in a pond. This was but the prelude of revenge, for presently (and here is the touch of humour) he made the Lord of Session ride at dead of night to the gallows, whereon the three malefactors were hanging. One arm of the crossbeams was still untenanted. 'By my soul, mon,' cried Gilderoy to the Lord ...

— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... and I'll give you all a treat." He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. ...

— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Micheltorena issued a decree which restored San Diego Mission temporalities to the management of the padre. He explained in his prelude that the decree was owing to the fact that the Mission establishments had been reduced to the mere space occupied by the buildings and orchards, that the padres had no support but that of charity, etc. Mofras gives the number of Indians in 1842 as five hundred, ...

— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... imposing than the assemblage which listened to Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the following September on the day when the Covenant was signed ...

— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

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