exordium

Borrowed from Latin exordium (“beginning, commencement”), from exōrdior (“I begin, commence”), from ex (“out of, from”) + ōrdior (“I begin”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɛɡˈzɔːdɪəm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɛɡˈzɔɹdɪəm/
• (US)

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exordium (plural exordiums or exordia)

1. (formal) A beginning.
2. The introduction to an essay or discourse.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     Cicero thinks, in discourses of philosophy, the exordium to be the hardest part: if it be so, I wisely lay hold on the conclusion.

   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 180–181:

     The depreciation of her produce was next insisted upon; and I found this exordium led to the information that Messrs. Standish and Co. had been enabled, from the depressed state of the market, to lay in a large stock of Irish linen at unheard-of low prices.

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     This is a feeble article of faith to begin with, but it helps to push my pen through this exordium and what now follows.

Learned borrowing from Latin exordium.

• IPA^(key): /ˌɛkˈsɔr.di.ʏm/

• Audio

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• Hyphenation: exor‧di‧um

exordium n (plural exordia or exordiums)

1. introduction, preface (to an essay or plea)

From exōrdior.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ekˈsoːr.di.um/, [ɛkˈs̠oːrd̪iʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ekˈsor.di.um/, [eɡˈzɔrd̪ium]

exōrdium n (genitive exōrdiī or exōrdī); second declension

1. beginning, commencement

   Synonyms: initium, prīmōrdium, prīncipium, orīgō, rudīmentum, limen

   Antonym: fīnis

2. introduction, preface, start or beginning of a speech
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 4.283–284:

     Heu quid agat? Quō nunc rēgīnam ambīre furentem
     audeat adfātū? Quae prīma exōrdia sūmat?

     Oh, what should he do now? How is he to solicit the distraught queen, [and] dare implore her? Which first words ought he choose?
     (Aeneas commits to leave Carthage and ponders the doubly emphatic “prima exordia.” Idiomatically, what does he even begin to tell Dido? How can he broach the subject with her?)

3. foundation, creation

   ab exordio urbis

   from the founding of the city (especially Rome)

Second-declension noun (neuter).

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

• “exordium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “exordium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• exordium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the conversation began in this way: sermo inductus a tali exordio