Concept in Definition ABC

A preliminary is everything that precedes a thing in time and serves as a preparation or introduction. This word is formed by the prefix pre, which indicates prior, as well as the term liminaris, which means the beginning of something.

The preliminary of something expresses a previous and preparatory action for another. Sometimes this word is used in the plural and talks about preliminaries, that is, the set of guidelines or actions prior to another.

While the preliminaries are an announcement that something is going to happen next, they usually play a secondary role and are not as relevant as the action or the main event.

Examples from everyday life

Before starting a football game, players must perform a whole series of preliminaries: listen to the slogans the coach in the locker room, warm up the body to prepare the body or perform some type of ritual prior to the meeting.

In sexual relations, human beings do not directly perform intercourse but there is an approach between the members of the couple in the form of kisses and caresses, that is, the preliminaries that announce the act sexual.

If someone has to give a conference to a group of people, before the conference there are usually some introductory words, for example, a greeting to the attendees or a few words of gratitude as a courtesy formula.

In the communication Everyday preliminaries are used to facilitate the exchange ideas. Thus, the greetings prior to a meeting and the various rules of courtesy act as introductory elements.

The above examples allow us to observe that the preliminaries are a secondary part of the main question, but they are not without their importance. In fact, certain actions are unthinkable without the corresponding preliminaries.

When the preliminaries become protagonists

On some occasions, preliminaries are no longer accessories and mere accessories and acquire a certain prominence. Thus, a movie trailer can determine its commercial success or failure, a novel of a Author novel accompanied by a Foreword of a prestigious writer can be a bestseller and a presentation of a novel product also conditions the sales to be made.

The examples in the trailer, the prologue, and the new product serve as a reminder that preliminaries are not always secondary.

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