Pretrial

//pɹɪˈtɹaɪəl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A preliminary trial held in advance of a court trial.

    "As a result, another pretrial review was to be held on 17 February."

  2. 2
    (law) a conference held before the trial begins to bring the parties together to outline discovery proceedings and to define the issues to be tried; more useful in civil than in criminal cases wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to a preliminary trial. not-comparable
  2. 2
    Before a trial. not-comparable

    "“A Navy Sailor has been placed in pretrial confinement in connection with the death of Seaman Resendiz. Charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice are pending,” NCIS told CNN in a statement Thursday."

Synonyms

All synonyms
pretrial conference

Example

More examples

"“A Navy Sailor has been placed in pretrial confinement in connection with the death of Seaman Resendiz. Charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice are pending,” NCIS told CNN in a statement Thursday."

Etymology

From pre- + trial.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.