Definition of PROLOGUE

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In ancient Greek drama, the prologos (a word that means basically "speaking before") was the opening portion of the play, before the entry of the all-important chorus. It might be spoken by a single actor, maybe playing a god, who would "set the scene" for the audience. Playwrights today instead often provide the same kind of "scene-setting" information through dialogue near the play's beginning; in movies, it may appear (as in the "Star Wars" series) in the form of actual written text. In a nonfiction book, the lead-in is now usually called a preface or introduction; novels rarely provide any introduction at all. Still, prologue remains a useful word for nonliterary purposes. The saying "The past is prologue" tells us that, in real life, almost everything can be a prologue to what follows it.

Examples of prologue in a Sentence

the prologue to his autobiography unfortunately, the burglary, which he committed while still a teen, was but a prologue to a wasted life of crime

Recent Examples on the Web

Past may be prologue, but none of these parallels is perfect. — James Mackintosh, WSJ, "What Happens When Bond Markets Get Weird," 3 Jan. 2019 If what’s past is prologue, that means core inflation will take another step up later in 2019 too. — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, "Bigger Gold Companies Still Aren’t Glitterati," 15 Jan. 2019 The play Romeo and Juliet begins, famously, with a prologue that is epilogue — two people have died, and are already buried. — Laura Hudson, The Verge, "Why Return of the Obra Dinn is my game of the year," 21 Dec. 2018 Will, a lapsed born-again Christian, frantically tries to free Phoebe from his influence, but the terrorist bombing foreshadowed in the prologue points to the novel’s direction. — Sam Sacks, WSJ, "Fiction: The Search for Self in an Ideological Age," 3 Aug. 2018 That prologue lays out the movie’s concerns in miniature: dashed hopes, secret identities and the dangerous art of self-reinvention. — Justin Chang, latimes.com, "Robert Pattinson delights in the sly, archly comic western 'Damsel'," 21 June 2018 Privacy - Terms The prologue sets the stakes, and plays like the stray imaginings of our current president. — Michael Phillips, kansascity, "‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ enters the border debate, guns blazing," 28 June 2018 Past isn’t always prologue, but the technology landscape tends to shift rapidly and humble even the most powerful players. — Dan Gallagher, WSJ, "Big Tech’s Path to $4 Trillion," 3 Aug. 2018 Sicario: Day of the Soldado has a prologue like something from the Terror Alert Desk of Sinclair Broadcasting. — Gary Thompson, Philly.com, "'Sicario: Day of the Soldado': On the border between action and exploitation," 27 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'prologue.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.