Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A foretaste.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The act of tasting beforehand or by anticipation; a foretaste.
- noun A previous libation; an offering made beforehand, as if in libation.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A tasting beforehand, or by anticipation; a foretaste.
- noun A pouring out, or libation, before tasting.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
tasting beforehand , or byanticipation ; aforetaste . - noun A
pouring out, orlibation , beforetasting .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I leave all this to the successor I pointed out in the commencement of this work, and satisfy myself merely with the prelibation, the right of the first comer to every sacrifice.
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Else I should plunge _in medias res_ upon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863 Various
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Honorable Mrs. Scawen at Maidwell, and packing the "apparatus criticus" into the spacious saddle-bags; and we enjoy the prelibation with which
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 Various
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The horror of life mixed itself already in earliest youth with the heavenly sweetness of life; that grief, which one in a hundred has sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect of life in its closing stage, for me shed its dews as a prelibation upon the fountains of life whilst yet sparkling to the morning sun.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 Various
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The party who dug the parson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of prelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, according to the Jewish notion, with milk and honey, but according to the revised version of Yankeedom, with milk and rum.
William Lloyd Garrison Grimke, Archibald H 1891
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The party who dug the parson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of prelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, according to the Jewish notion, with milk and _honey_, but according to the revised version of Yankeedom, with milk and _rum_.
William Lloyd Garrison The Abolitionist Archibald Henry Grimk�� 1889
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I am sure that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality.
Là-bas Keene [Translator] Wallace 1877
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Those influences of the Spirit which believers now enjoy are at once a prelibation or antepast of future blessedness, the same in kind though immeasurably less in degree; and a pledge of the certain enjoyment of that blessedness.
A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians 1797-1878 1860
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Here let me observe that for some time we had experienced the most uncomfortable weather, as a prelibation of our future sufferings.
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The sorrow he felt before was only an earnest of this damnation, a taste and prelibation of future wrath.
Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. V. 1634-1716 1823
qms commented on the word prelibation
His dancing was wildest gyration
And sure to induce dehydration,
The which to avoid
Our Ernest employed
A liberal dose of prelibation.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
April 19, 2016