1. Orchestral music played at the beginning of an opera or oratorio 
2. Something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows
   "drinks were the overture to dinner"
   - preliminary, prelude 
3. A tentative suggestion designed to elicit the reactions of others
   - advance, approach, feeler

Derived forms: overtures

Type of: inception, music [archaic], origin, origination, proffer, proposition, suggestion

Encyclopedia: Overture

• barroom
• barrow
• Barrow's goldeneye
• barrow-boy
• barrow-man
• barrowful
• Barrymore
• bars
• Barstow
• Bart
• bartender
• barter
• barter away
• barterer
• Barth
• Barthelme
• Barthold George Niebuhr
• Bartholdi
• Bartholin
• Bartholin's gland
• Bartholomeu Dias
• Bartholomeu Diaz
• Bartholomew Roberts
• bartizan
• Bartle Frere