Definition of "dedicatory" [ded•i•ca•to•ry]

• Of or pertaining to dedication. (adjective)
• A dedication. (noun)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "{136} Although no specific reference is made outside the twenty 'dedicatory' sonnets to the youth as a literary patron, and the clues to his identity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of disinterested love or friendship also have Southampton for their subject."
• "Many besides the 'dedicatory' sonnets are addressed to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for whom the poet avows 'love,' in the Elizabethan sense of friendship."
• "Three of the twenty 'dedicatory' sonnets merely translate into the language of poetry the expressions of devotion which had already done duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose that prefaces 'Lucrece.'"