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
He swam the lead leg in the preliminaries, helping the team set an Olympic record that paved the way for a world-record win in the final.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2025
As the preliminaries drew to a close, Mike’s friends gradually started coming upstairs to join him.
From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2024
The instructor, working on the knowledge that his students either had taken it before and flunked it, or had already had it in high school, sluffed over the preliminaries and got right down to translation.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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.
