Maana ya kamusi ya neno "Dibaji" ni utangulizi wa kitabu, kwa kawaida hutaja mada, upeo, au malengo yake. Inaweza pia kurejelea taarifa ya awali au ya utangulizi, haswa hati au hotuba. Kwa maneno mengine, dibaji ni sehemu ya utangulizi ambayo humpa msomaji muhtasari wa maudhui yanayofuata. Kwa kawaida hujumuisha nia ya mwandishi, usuli wa kazi, na shukrani au sifa zozote.
1. This first glimpse, however, is a significant one, for it shows the early development of that love of the drama which exercised such an influence on his life and seems to have grown stronger as he grew older, and of which this very preface, written only a few months before his death, is such a striking proof.
2. The portrait he draws in the preface to the novels, with the aquiline features, chestnut hair, smooth untroubled forehead, and bright cheerful eyes, is the very portrait of a sanguine man.
3. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man could pour out.
4. He said emphatically in the preface to the First Part and in the last sentence of the Second, that he had no other object in view than to discredit these books, and this, to advanced criticism, made it clear that his object must have been something else.
5. As to Sancho, it is plain, from the concluding words of the preface to the First Part, that he was a favourite with his creator even before he had been taken into favour by the public.
6. My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books.
7. For I can tell thee, though composing it cost me some labour, I found none greater than the making of this Preface thou art now reading.
8. After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them.
9. There is one point on which we would wish to say a word before closing this preface.