prebuttal

plural prebuttals

1. informalA preemptive rebuttal.

   You're no flexecuive, after all, just a lowly permalance. Your prebuttals fall flat, and he orders you on to a data fast, tosses a message slip on your inflatable, and leaves.

   2001 December 17, Hubert B. Herring, “Roll Over, Shakespeare, the Future Is Here”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   The pope should stick to religion and leave science to the scientists, said one conservative, the Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in one of a wave of “prebuttal” remarks as the encyclical was being finalized.

   2015 June 28, Paul Vallely, “The Pope's Ecological Vow”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Still, is there a more exciting player in the prebuttal space than Facebook, whose attempts to get out in front of the fortnightly exposés of its behaviour are fast becoming a totally non-ominous part of the early 21st-century powerscape?

   2021 October 22, Marina Hyde, “Finally, Facebook can say it’s not the most toxic social network”, in The Guardian