Prelap
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A film editing technique in which the dialogue from the next scene precedes the cut, and the beginning of the dialogue is heard in the outgoing scene. countable, uncountable
"Some aspects of the editing were groundbreaking: In his book “Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice” (2001), Don Fairservice pointed out that “Stagecoach” contained one of the earliest uses — maybe even the first — of the now-commonplace technique called a prelap, in which as one scene ends, dialogue from the next is already beginning on the soundtrack."
Example
More examples"Some aspects of the editing were groundbreaking: In his book “Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice” (2001), Don Fairservice pointed out that “Stagecoach” contained one of the earliest uses — maybe even the first — of the now-commonplace technique called a prelap, in which as one scene ends, dialogue from the next is already beginning on the soundtrack."
Etymology
From pre- + lap. Compare overlap.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.