diff --git a/source/reference/glossary.txt b/source/reference/glossary.txt
index df5884570f4..06a1704edb2 100644
--- a/source/reference/glossary.txt
+++ b/source/reference/glossary.txt
@@ -512,11 +512,13 @@ Glossary
       MongoDB will return from the documents in the result set.
 
    pre-splitting
-      When deploying a :term:`shard cluster`, it is sometimes
-      necessary to expedite the initial distribution of documents
-      among shards by manually dividing the collection into chunks.
-      In this case, you pre-split the chunks instead of waiting for
-      the MongoDB :term:`balancer` to create splits.
+      Pre-splitting is an action you can perform prior to data insertion
+      that specifies the shard key values on which to split chunks.
+      When deploying a :term:`shard cluster`, it is sometimes necessary
+      to expedite the initial distribution of documents among shards by
+      manually dividing the collection into chunks. In this case, you
+      pre-split the chunks instead of waiting for the MongoDB
+      :term:`balancer` to create splits.
 
    SSD
       Solid State Disk. A high-performance disk drive that uses solid