Word Finder - preface

definition

The beginning or introductory portion that comes before the main text of a document or book.

example

The book included a brief preface by a leading expert in the field.

synonyms

• forespeech
• foretalk
• foreword
• introduction
• proem
• prologue

definition

An introduction, or series of preliminary remarks.

definition

The prelude or introduction to the canon of the Mass.

synonyms

• prelude

definition

A title or epithet.

definition

To introduce or make a comment before (the main point).

example

Let me preface this by saying that I don't know him that well.

definition

To give a preface to.

example

to preface a book

A collected edition of his works, with a biographical preface, was published in 1737.

The author however of the preface to The Rights of the Lords asserted (1702), while blaming their publication as "scattered and unfinished papers," admits their genuineness.

Charles, however, has given good grounds for supposing that it is merely a preface, and that the work went on to discuss grammar, logic (which Bacon thought of little service, as reasoning was innate), mathematics, general physics, metaphysics and moral philosophy.

In 1529 he brought out his Oeconomia christiana (a treatise in German, on the right ordering of a Christian household) with a dedication to the duchess Sybil of Saxony and a preface by Luther.

In a preface to a later edition she tells us how the novel came to be written, and, though it anticipates events, this revelation of herself may best be given here.

In 1617 Napier published his Rabdologia, 4 a duodecimo of one hundred and fifty-four pages; there is prefixed to it as preface a dedicatory epistle to the high chancellor of Scotland.

The doctrine of " Emboitement " is contained in the Considerations sur le principe de vie (1705); the preface to the Theodicee (1710); and the Principes de la nature et de la grace (§ 6) (1718).

In the preface, Lamarck says that the work was written in 1776, and presented to the Academy in 1780; but it was not published before 2794, and at that time it presumably expressed Lamarck's mature views.

The preface to this edition collects all the biographical details and gives full bibliographical references to MSS.

Memoirs of Lord Anglesey were published by Sir P. Pett in 1693, but contain little biographical information and were repudiated as a mere imposture by Sir John Thompson (Lord Haversham), his son-in-law, in his preface to Lord Anglesey's State of the Government in 1694.

Ultimately a cycle of 19 years was accepted, and it is the use of this cycle which makes the Golden Number and Sunday Letter, explained in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer, necessary.

In the preface he states that the work was undertaken in consequence of the attack on the method of fluxions made by George Berkeley in 1734.

Though at first written consecutively, the work is now usually divided into three portions, - a preface, the history proper, and an epistle, - the last, which is largely made up of passages and texts of Scripture brought together for the purpose of condemning the vices of his countrymen and their rulers, being the least important, though by far the longest of the three.

This suspicion is strengthened by the fact (discovered by von Sybel) that even the very preface to his book is taken almost word for word from Rufinus's translation of Origen's commentary on the epistle to the Romans.

It was stated in the preface to the budget of 1910 that the government would grant no more railway concessions carrying guarantees.

In the preface it is stated that Howel, "seeing the laws and customs of the country violated with impunity, summoned the archbishop of Menevia, other bishops and the chief of the clergy, the nobles of Wales, and six persons (four laymen and two clerks) from each comot, to meet at a place called Y Ty Gwyn ar Da y, or the white house on the river Tav, repaired thither in person, selected from the whole assembly twelve of the most experienced persons, added to their number a clerk or doctor of laws, named Bllgywryd, and to these thirteen confided the task of examining, retaining, expounding and abrogating.

The preface to his Ever Green is a protest against "imported trimming" and "foreign embroidery in our writings," and a plea for a return to simple Scottish tradition.

The preface to this last was condemned to public burning by parliament, but, as No.

Brisson has been charged with jealousy of, if not hostility to, the great Swede, and it is true that in the preface to his Ornithologie he complains of the insufficiency of the Linnaean characters, but, when one considers how much better acquainted with birds the Frenchman was, such criticism must be allowed to be pardonable if not wholly just.

The preface to the prose life of Cuthbert proves that he had stayed at Lindisfarne prior to 721, while the Epistle to Egbert shows that he had visited him at York in 733.

To this may be added a short extract from the Explanatory Preface to the Finance Bill for the year 1910-1911.

See the Letters of Stevenson to his Family (1899), with the critical and biographical preface by Mr Sidney Colvin; Vailima Letters, to Sidney Colvin (1895), and the Life of Robert Louis Stevenson by Graham Balfour (1901).

Lydgate's most doughty and learned apologist is Dr Schick, whose preface to the Temple of Glass embodies practically all that is known or conjectured concerning this author, including the chronological order of his works.

The second edition in English appeared at Edinburgh in 1611, and in the preface to it Napier states he intended to have published an edition in Latin soon after the original publication in 1593, but that, as the work had now been made public by the French and Dutch translations, besides the English editions, and as he was "advertised that our papistical adversaries wer to write larglie against the said editions that are alreadie set out," he defers the Latin edition "till having first seene the adversaries objections, I may insert in the Latin edition an apologie of that which is rightly done, and an amends of whatsoever is amisse."

He may have compiled the preface, but the main portion of this volume is probably the work of his grandson, the historian Khwandamir (1475-1534), to whom also a part of the appendix must be ascribed.

Of this school the acknowledged head and founder was Wordsworth, and the tenets it professed are those laid down by the poet himself in the famous preface to the edition of The Lyrical Ballads which he published in 1800.

The most notable of these fall within a circumscribed area, and it is therefore necessary to preface their consideration with a statement of the broader characteristic divisions of the metropolis.

Its origin is described in its preface.

In the preface he states the position that "whenever, then, two gases are allowed to mix without the performance of work, there is dissipation of energy, and an opportunity of doing work at the expense of low temperature heat has been for ever lost."

Mahmud now definitely selected him for the work of compiling and versifying the ancient legends, and bestowed upon him such marks of his favour and munificence as to elicit from the poet an enthusiastic panegyric, which is inserted in the preface of the Shahnama, and forms a curious contrast to the bitter satire which he subsequently prefixed to the book.

Moreover, as Professor Burmeister states in his preface, Nitzsch by no means regarded the natural sequence of groups as the highest problem of the systematist, but rather their correct limitation.

The original, which consisted of a preface and thirteen books, is not lost, but we have a Latin translation of the first six books and a fragment of another on polygonal numbers by Xylander of Augsburg (1575), and Latin and Greek translations by Gaspar Bachet de Merizac (1621-1670).

In the preface to this work, which is dedicated to one Dionysius, Diophantus explains his notation, naming the square, cube and fourth powers, dynamis, cubus, dynamodinimus, and so on, according to the sum in the indices.

He projected numerous other works, as is shown by a letter to Peter Ramus in 1568, which Adrian Romanus inserted in the preface to his Idea of Mathematics.

It seems, in short, to have originally formed the preface to the small group of prophecies which now follows it, viz.

The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of iElfric's authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great, but the short list there given by no means exhausts the authors whom he consulted.

In the preface to the first volume he regrets that except for Alfred's translations Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers.

Zyrowski, Lamartine (1896); and perhaps best of all in the Preface to Emile Legouis' Clarendon Press edition of Jocelyn (1906), where a vigorous effort is made to combat the idea of Lamartine's sentimentality and femininity as a poet.

The preface was translated into German by Theodor Noldeke in his Beitrage (Hanover, 1864), pp. 1-51.

In 1850 he published a tragedy, Galileo Galilei, and two volumes of his Lectures on the Atomic Theory and Essays Scientific and Literary appeared in 1858, with a preface by his kinsman Dr John Brown, the author of Horae Subsecivae.

The date of the Abridgment of the Records of the Tower of London, published 1689, is doubtful, though the preface is dated 1656-1657.

When the French government decided on printing a general catalogue of the printed books in the Bibliotheque, Delisle became responsible for this great undertaking and took an active part in the work; in the preface to the first volume (1897) he gave a detailed history of the library and its management.

The first section is a preface containing exhortation in general terms. The main section is the second, containing a series of night visions, the significant features of which are pointed out by an angel who stands by the prophet and answers his questions.

The great undertaking was supported by liberal subscriptions, and Walton's political opinions did not deprive him of the help of the Commonwealth; the paper used was freed from duty, and the interest of Cromwell in the work was acknowledged in the original preface, part of which was afterwards cancelled to make way for more loyal expressions towards that restored monarchy under which Oriental studies in England immediately began to languish.

After his death his lectures were written out from his own notes, supplemented by those of some of his pupils, and published with a biographical preface by his friend and colleague, Professor John Robison (1739-1805), in 1803, as Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, delivered in the University of Edinburgh.

Each book was complete in itself, and had a separate title and preface.

It is important to understand that Mach had developed this economical view of thought in 1872, more than ten years before the appearance of his work on the history of mechanics as he tells us in the preface, where he adds that at a later date similar views were expressed by Kirchhoff in his V orlesungen fiber mathematische Physik (1874).

The passages are collected in Kimhi's preface to his commentary on the Psalms, ed.

In the preface to it he took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat of the 2nd of December, - " a fortunate crisis which has set aside the parliamentary system and instituted a dictatorial republic."

In the preface to the last part of his Ethics (1893) Spencer regrets that "the Doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent he had hoped," but his contributions to ethics are not unlikely to be the most permanently valuable part of his philosophy.