PRELUDE

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does prelude mean? 

• PRELUDE (noun)
  The noun PRELUDE has 2 senses:

1. something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows

2. music that precedes a fugue or introduces an act in an opera

  Familiarity information: PRELUDE used as a noun is rare.

• PRELUDE (verb)
  The verb PRELUDE has 2 senses:

1. serve as a prelude or opening to

2. play as a prelude

  Familiarity information: PRELUDE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRELUDE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

overture; preliminary; prelude

Context example:

drinks were the overture to dinner

Hypernyms ("prelude" is a kind of...):

inception; origin; origination (an event that is a beginning; a first part or stage of subsequent events)

Derivation:

prelude (serve as a prelude or opening to)

Sense 2

Meaning:

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

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("prelude" is a kind of...):

music (an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prelude"):

chorale prelude (a composition for organ using a chorale as a basis for variations)

Derivation:

prelude (play as a prelude)

• PRELUDE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they prelude    ... he / she / it preludes   
Past simple: preluded   
Past participle: preluded   
-ing form: preluding   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Serve as a prelude or opening to

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "prelude" is one way to...):

function; serve (serve a purpose, role, or function)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

prelude (something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Play as a prelude

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Hypernyms (to "prelude" is one way to...):

play; spiel (replay (as a melody))

Domain category:

music (musical activity (singing or whistling etc.))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sentence example:

They will prelude the duet

Derivation:

prelude (music that precedes a fugue or introduces an act in an opera)

 Context examples 

Who could have guessed that it was the prelude to our supreme disaster?

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking meantime.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Little did I think that this would be the prelude to the most crushing misfortune of my life.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We were all silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a prelude.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

So far her improvement was sufficient—and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

To be called into notice in such a manner, to hear that it was but the prelude to something so infinitely worse, to be told that she must do what was so impossible as to act; and then to have the charge of obstinacy and ingratitude follow it, enforced with such a hint at the dependence of her situation, had been too distressing at the time to make the remembrance when she was alone much less so, especially with the superadded dread of what the morrow might produce in continuation of the subject.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

For a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness, peering continually out of the windows, and ceasing to take the short walk which had usually been the prelude to his dinner.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But alas! there was one authority which was higher even than that of the referee, and we were destined to an experience which was the prelude, and sometimes the conclusion, also, of many an old-time fight.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed for ever out of our busy lives.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)