preprandial

adj

1. Occurring before a meal, especially dinner.

   “Whilst meditating on the beauty and design as shown in the ant-eater, whose præprandial movements I was intently watching, a young gentleman (not a naturalist) asked me, sotto voce, "what is that contrivance?" "It is a contrivance," said I, "for catching ants, and that is why he is called the ant-eater," I continued to a young lady, who wanted to know the meaning of his name.”

   “Gauss laid aside his pipe, pulled his velvet cap over the back of his head, returned the Russian dictionary and the little volume of Pushkin to the shelf, and prepared to go for his preprandial walk.”

   “Patients who demonstrate significant insulin resistance at diagnosis and require insulin therapy may alternate preprandial and postprandial evaluations to enable more rapid optimization of control by using an additional supplemental insulin sliding scale as needed to cover preprandial hyperglycaemia (>100 ml per dl)[…].”

   “Social drinkers (as they are sometimes called) may have excellent control over the amount they drink and still look forward to a preprandial aperitif (and miss it when they do not get one).”

   “The standardized analysis of metabolic parameters in the preprandial and postprandial state may provide important functional clues for the diagnosis of metabolic disorders.”

noun

1. A predinner drink; an apéritif.

   “They drink, for one thing, sweet ports as preprandials, anathema to most English, who consider them digestifs, or after-dinner company.”

   “Why have people forsaken martinis, Manhattans, old fashioneds, and other preprandials of long-standing popularity?”

   “'How's Allison?' I asked over preprandials. He smiled as I ordered Southern Comfort – no ice, no soda; he liked the idea that some things don't change.”