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 946730821:

     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 24531354, 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]
• (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
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