When I taught high school, I gave a grammar pretest during the second day of every class. We graded the pretests in class, and I did not include the scores in calculations of semester grades. I just wanted to give a test before we started reviewing or covering material to know what each group of students already understood about parts of speech, parts of a sentence, phrases, clauses, and such.
A pretest is given before the final test. A preface is an introduction before the text of a book. If you watch racing, a prerace show is a show that occurs before the race. To preheat an oven means to heat the oven before you put a recipe/dish in it.
In other words, pre- means before. And a prefix is an affix added to the beginning of a word, just like the prefix pre- itself.
What’s next? Prefixes you should know.
