proemialadj.

1447 O. Bokenham Lives of Saints (Arun.) (1938) 4732 (MED) O blyssyd virgyne..Wych vouchyddyst-saf þine erys inclyne To prohemyal preyer wych I þe made to.

1597 Bp. J. King Lect. Ionas xxxiv. 457 In this proœmiall sentence.

1659 H. L'Estrange Alliance Divine Offices 240 Baptism was never afforded to persons adult without Repentance, proemial and preparatory to it.

1688 W. Smith Future World ii. ii. 127 So great a part of his Mortal Duration must be spent and worn up in the very preparative and proemial Labours towards the acquisition of any one part of that which is reputed Learning.

1750 S. Johnson Rambler No. 1 (1753) I The Epic Writers..have found the proemial Part of the Poem such an Addition to their..Undertaking.

1772 T. Nugent tr. J. F. de Isla Hist. Friar Gerund I. 203 Proemial questions, which could serve no other purpose than to puzzle the boys' heads.

1839 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe IV. iii. 194 The Logic is introduced by two proœmial books.

1862 F. Freeman Hist. Cape Cod II. 376 An able and interesting discourse..so interesting and well-written that we regret it must suffer at our hand, in its proëmial part at least.

1923 E. A. Singer Mod. Thinkers & Present Probl. i. 15 It is a brave, even an overbrave flourish with which Bruno ends this proemial epistle.

1994 Philos. Q. 44 126 Proemial issues are often the knottiest ones and determine the ways in which other subsidiary topics are treated and resolved.

1898 F. Davis Romano-Brit. City of Silchester 29 A building not less interesting, and proemially far more potent.

1997 R. Howard in R. Lesser Growing Back p. ix Many of the poems offered here were plausibly intended to constitute the poet's first book, and may well be taken, thus proemially, as lections of the poet's early life.