Where does the word “preface” come from and What does preface mean in Latin?

“Peter Rice eats fish and catches eels,” was the favorite acrostic carefully lettered above PREFACE in all schoolbooks in our generation.

This, of course, had then to be reversed by some bright spirit and, on the lower edge, we read, “Eels catch alligators; fish eat raw potatoes.”

But the term itself is merely from the Latin praefatio, “a saying beforehand.”