the.com/preorder

means To pay for something before it's released or available, based only on the promise of what it will be.

from A straightforward 20th-century compound of 'pre-' (Latin for 'before') plus 'order,' the commercial sense of 'order' — a request to buy goods — dating back to the 1400s. No myth needed here: it's a plain functional word, built the same way as 'preapprove' or 'prepay,' that boomed with mail-order catalogs and later exploded with video games and gadgets, where studios learned that fans would gladly fund a product sight-unseen just to feel first in line.