"Prelude" traces back through French to a Latin verb, praeludere, that first meant "to play before," or more fully, "to play a musical piece for practice before performing it."

"Prelude" has a different most common meaning in music today: a prelude is a piece of music that introduces a longer piece, or any short little piece of music meant to be played by itself.

More generally, since the mid 1500s in English, we've used "prelude" to mean "a beginning or introduction to something else: possibly a cause of it, or the first sign or signal of it, or the first step of its existence."

For example:
—A flower bud is a prelude to the springtime.
—A wistful gaze at the ice cream shop is the prelude to getting ice cream.
—A pop drumbeat starts up as Jack Black says, "Hear that? That's the sound of sizzling," a prelude to his 34-second song "Steve's Lava Chicken." (La-la-la-lava, ch-ch-ch-chicken! Steve's Lava Chicken, yeah, it's tasty as hell!)

Part of speech:

Noun, the countable kind: "Between classmates, a smile can be the prelude to a friendship."

Other forms: 

Rarely, you'll see "prelude" used as a verb, as in "The smile preluded to the friendship" or "She preluded with a smile." However, this is rare enough to make it to sound weird or wrong to most listeners.

how to use it:

Pick the formal, common word "prelude" when you want to label some event that seems to inevitably lead to another, bigger event.

Say that the first thing is the prelude to the second. These events might be good, bad, or neutral: "Store shelves are packed with fresh new notebooks and pencils, the prelude to a new school year." "A cat's hiss may be a prelude to a bite." Here's George Orwell: "The person gave a small cough, evidently as a prelude to speaking."

Or, to emphasize the suddenness of some event, say that it happens without prelude. "She launched into a sales pitch without prelude." "Without prelude, they got up and walked out of the auditorium mid-speech." "In A Minecraft Movie, Jennifer Coolidge plays a school principal who meets a new student and, without prelude, unloads her tragicomic backstory on him."

examples:

"He'd accept their invitation to compete for the United States Championship—the prelude, he hoped, to eventually capturing the World Championship as well."
  — Frank Brady, Endgame, 2011

"With bright colors, deceptive shapes and sweet aromas, carnivorous plants lure insects only to trap and devour them. Nothing about them is accidental. Their beauty is the prelude to a deadly trap."
   — Fernando Vergara, Associated Press, April 6 2025

has this page helped you understand "prelude"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "prelude" without saying "lead-in" or "beginning."

try it out:

Fill in the blanks: "(Something good or bad) is the prelude to (something VERY good or bad)."

Example 1: "That first cold, clean scent in the air is the prelude to winter in Virginia."

Example 2: "Freedom of the word is the first prelude to democracy."
  — Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky, 2007

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month: Poetic Connections!

Check out three snippets from a poem, along with three words we've studied—some beautiful, some outrageous—and decide which word you'll connect to each snippet. To see the definitions, highlight the hidden white text after each word. And to see an example, head here.

Try this set today:

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

Snippets:
1. "To watch his woods fill up with snow"
2. "The darkest evening of the year"
3. "I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep"

Words:
A. lodestar (meaning... a guide to follow, especially to a goal)
B. rimy (meaning... coated in frost)
C. tenebrous (meaning... hidden by darkness)

To see one possible set of answers, scroll all the way down; if your answers don’t match these, that's fine: all that matters is that yours make sense to you.

review this word:

1. The precise opposite of a PRELUDE would be a POSTLUDE, meaning an ending or conclusion, especially in _____.

A. music
B. relationships
C. diplomatic negotiations

2. You stand quietly, feet planted on the mat, eyes focused on the wooden board held in front of you; you rear back, the prelude _____ a swift kick that cracks the board in half.

A. of
B. to
C. in

Answers to the review questions: 1. A 2. B Suggested answers to the game: I’d connect lodestar to snippet 3 because the speaker has his heart set on following the long road ahead of him to keep his promises, rimy to snippet 1 for the frosty trees, and tenebrous to snippet 2 for the dark night in the wood.

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.