preview
Americannoun
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previews
plural
-
an earlier or previous view.
-
an advance showing of a motion picture, play, etc., before its public opening.
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an advance showing of brief scenes in a motion picture, television show, etc., for purposes of advertisement.
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anything that gives an advance idea or impression of something to come.
verb (used with object)
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previews,
present (3rd person singular)
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previewed,
past participle, past
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previewing
present participle
noun
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an advance or preliminary view or sight
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an advance showing before public presentation of a film, art exhibition, etc, usually before an invited audience of celebrities and journalists
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a public performance of a play before the official first night
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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previewsimple
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previewssimple
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have previewedperfect
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has previewedperfect
-
am previewingprogressive
-
are previewingprogressive
-
is previewingprogressive
-
have been previewingperfect progressive
-
has been previewingperfect progressive
Past
-
previewedsimple
-
had previewedperfect
-
was previewingprogressive
-
were previewingprogressive
-
had been previewingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of preview
First recorded in 1600–10; 1920–25 preview for def. 2; pre- + view
Explanation
A preview gives you a look at something that hasn't been released yet. You see lots of previews at the movies. If you've been to a movie lately, chances are you saw plenty of previews — little highlights of upcoming movies that are designed to make you want to see them. Any little snippet designed to get you excited about something to come can be called a preview. If you're writing a novel, you could give someone a preview by reading them a few lines. And you're lucky enough to see a show before it opens to the public, you're previewing it.
Vocabulary lists containing preview
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: pre-
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Power Prefix: Pre-
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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.
See Examples For:
Annual school photographs are a rite of passage but, with technology now able to remove watermarks from preview images in seconds, some parents are bypassing the payment process altogether.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
The Silicon Valley Bank crisis of March 2023 offered a preview of what can happen when technology accelerates money: Tens of billions of dollars left one bank in a day.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
The disruptions it could wreak on everything from air travel to farming preview what a normal year may look like decades from now if carbon emissions continue unabated.
From Slate ● Sep. 28, 2026
If there was a potentially controversial exhibit, the museum would bring members over for a preview tour, so they had some context for complaints they might receive.
From Salon ● Sep. 25, 2026
Each one I look at for longer than a second starts to play a preview of a Memory that I had stored.
From "Warcross" by Marie Lu
In November, Amazon began offering enterprise previews for Leo, and plans to begin commercial service this year.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026
Broadway previews for “Dolly: A True Original Musical” will begin in December, with opening night scheduled for Jan. 19, 2027.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
Some of their microseries will be shown at movie theaters during previews.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
The Sunday Mirror previews Andy Burnham's economic speech on Monday, where he will pledge to give mayors more power and invest extra cash into the regions.
From BBC ● Jun. 28, 2026
She’d rather face her death without any more previews.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
Such a reprimand had been previewed by some observers.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
Accompanied by their wives, the leaders joined Charles and Queen Camilla at the museum, where they previewed the landmark Bayeux Tapestry exhibition ahead of its public opening next week.
From Barron's ● Sep. 3, 2026
Two thoughts: First, we saw this split previewed in Bruen, with the public defenders’ amicus brief.
From Slate ● Jul. 24, 2026
Alibaba Group previewed its new AI model, Qwen3.8-Max-Preview, which it says is second only to Anthropic’s Fable 5.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
Engravings of the Arctic from his upcoming book were previewed in the news media, increasing its soaring advance sales.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
Welker was previewing Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press” on NBC’s Washington station WRC, when she made the remarks about Trump’s endorsements.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2026
The maker of ChatGPT said Wednesday that it was previewing new technology to some customers that let it detect patterns and safety risks across multiple interactions with its models.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
The software firm is previewing new security services based on agentic AI, he explains, but is in discussion with corporate customers about how to charge for them.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
Las Vegas: IBM unveiled a device that merged telephony and computing in 1992 at a Las Vegas trade show, previewing the coming mobile era.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
All afternoon she had been preoccupied with previewing Darlene’s dress rehearsal.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
