Vorläufiger

Vorläufiger is the attributive, inflected form of the German adjective vorläufig, meaning provisional, temporary, or tentative. It describes something that is not final and may be changed or completed later. In German, the form appears before a noun and changes with gender, number, and case; common examples include der vorläufige Plan, die vorläufige Entscheidung, das vorläufige Dokument, die vorläufigen Maßnahmen.

Etymology: vorläufig derives from vor- meaning “before” and lauf(l) meaning “to run,” originally conveying the sense of “for the time being.” It is widely used in official and administrative language to indicate provisional status.

Usage: The term is frequent in law, administration, finance, and science. Phrases such as vorläufiger Haftbefehl (provisional arrest warrant), vorläufige Entscheidung (tentative decision), or vorläufige Finanzierungszusage (provisional funding commitment) illustrate its scope. In research, vorläufige Ergebnisse refer to preliminary results that are subject to verification. The English equivalent is provisional or temporary.

Related terms: Provisorisch is a closely related synonym; vorläufigkeit is the noun form meaning provisional character. The expression vorläufiger Status is common in official prose. In practice, the form of vorläufiger adapts to gender, number, and case, as in ein vorläufiger Plan (masc nom), eine vorläufige Entscheidung (fem nom), das vorläufige Dokument (neut nom), or die vorläufigen Maßnahmen (pl nom).