A word spoken ahead of what it names.
Most words describe what has already happened. Προλέγω runs the other way: it is speech that arrives first, and the world that follows after.
- To foretell, to predict.To say what is going to happen before it does.
- To proclaim beforehand.To announce openly, to give public warning in advance.
- To choose before others.To pick out ahead of the rest; to prefer.
Two small words, one direction.
The verb is built from a preposition and one of the oldest verbs in Greek.
Λέγω first meant to gather and pick out, and only later to tell, to lay words out one after another. That is why προλέγω carries both senses at once:
The same root lives on in English:
The opening that already knows the ending.
Greek tragedy often began with a prologue: one voice stepping forward to tell the audience what was about to unfold. The story was said before it was shown.
The prologue
In the plays of Euripides, a god or a character opens the drama by setting out the past and hinting at the end.
Prolegomena
Immanuel Kant titled a short book Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: what has to be said first, before anything else can be built.
προλελεγμένοι
“picked out before the rest”
Homer · Iliad 13.689 · said of chosen warriors