- plural of preliminary.
preliminaries
Britishplural noun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Nine university students entered the preliminaries this year, wrestling bulls weighing hundreds of kilograms and sporting hard, stubby horns.
From Barron's ● Jun. 28, 2026
Renoir stopped making preparatory studies between 1865 and 1875 when, like his Impressionist colleagues Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro, he worked directly from the motif, without preliminaries.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 2025
As the preliminaries drew to a close, Mike’s friends gradually started coming upstairs to join him.
From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2024
He focused instead on mental preparation, which might explain his confidence after the lackluster preliminaries.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2024
The worry came from what would happen after the preliminaries.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
