PREPARATION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Preparation

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/prˌɛpərˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Preparation n.

1.

The act of preparing or fitting beforehand for a particular purpose, use, service, or condition; previous arrangement or adaptation; a making ready; as, the preparation of land for a crop of wheat; the preparation of troops for a campaign.

2.

The state of being prepared or made ready; preparedness; readiness; fitness; as, a nation in good preparation for war.

3.

That which makes ready, prepares the way, or introduces; a preparatory act or measure. "I will show what preparations there were in nature for this dissolution."

4.

That which is prepared, made, or compounded by a certain process or for a particular purpose; a combination. Specifically:

(a)

Any medicinal substance fitted for use.

(b)

Anything treated for preservation or examination as a specimen.

(c)

Something prepared for use in cookery. "I wish the chemists had been more sparing who magnify their preparations." "In the preparations of cookery, the most volatile parts of vegetables are destroyed."

5.

An army or fleet. (Obs.)

6.

(Mus.) The holding over of a note from one chord into the next chord, where it forms a temporary discord, until resolved in the chord that follows; the anticipation of a discordant note in the preceding concord, so that the ear is prepared for the shock. See Suspension.

7.

Accomplishment; qualification. (Obs.)

See images of 'Preparation'

Etymology of 'Preparation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Preparation" Quotes from Famous Books

... set sail from Boston in ten or twelve vessels, which had been hired by the governor. A few days afterwards, an English fleet, commanded by Commodore Peter Warren, sailed also for Louisbourg, to assist the provincial army. So, now, after all this bustle of preparation, the town and province were left in ...

— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... said, drank confusion to the man who invented the fifth act of a play. He who has edited an extensive work, and has concluded his labours by the preparation of a copious index, might well be pardoned, if he omitted to include the inventor of the Preface among the benefactors of mankind. The long and arduous task that years before he had set himself to do is done, and the last thing that he desires ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Latin do we not premise the Greek, and to the Greek the Coptic and Oriental tongues? Or how long since is it, that the synthetic has been proved so much superior to the analytic mode of instruction? In female education, the modern languages are taught without all this preparation; nor do I find that our fair rivals are at all inferior to the generality of our sex in their proficiency. With the youth of sense and spirit of both sexes, the learning of French is usually considered, rather as a pleasure, than a burden. Were the Latin communicated ...

— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... the clash of ideas between the old and the new generations, and the struggles, the aspirations and the thoughts that engrossed the advanced youth of Russia; so that his collected works form a remarkable literary record of the successive movements of Russian society in a period of preparation, fraught with epochal significance, which culminated in the overthrow of Czarism and the inauguration of a new and true democracy, marking the beginning, perhaps, of a radical transformation the ...

— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... got back, it was to find the post in a fever of preparation. John Gaviller had asked every white man to his house to dinner to meet the ladies. It was to be a real "outside" dinner party, and there was a sudden, frantic demand for collars, cravats and presentable foot-wear. Nobody at the post had a dress-suit ...

— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

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