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, the players must perform a series of preliminaries: listen to the coach's instructions in the locker room, warm up the body to prepare the organism or perform some kind of ritual prior to the match.
In sexual relations, human beings do not carry out intercourse directly, but rather there is an approach between the members of the couple in the form of kisses and caresses, that is, the preliminaries that announce the sexual act.
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 thanks as a courtesy.
In everyday communication, preliminaries are used to facilitate the exchange of 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, the preliminaries cease to be accessories and mere complements and acquire a certain prominence. Thus, a movie trailer can determine its commercial success or failure, a novel by a new author accompanied by a foreword by a prestigious writer can be a best-seller, and a presentation of a new product also conditions sales that go away. To make.
The examples in the trailer, the prologue, and the new product serve as a reminder that preliminaries are not always secondary.
Photos: iStock - 2009 Getty Images / franckreporter
