Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To indicate or give warning of beforehand; presage.
  • noun An advance sign; a warning.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To be-token beforehand; prognosticate; foreshadow.
  • noun A prognostic; a premonitory sign.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Prognostic; previous omen.
  • transitive verb To foreshow; to presignify; to prognosticate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A prognostic; a premonitory sign; warning or presentment.
  • verb To betoken beforehand; prognosticate; foreshadow; give warning; presage.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an event that is experienced as indicating important things to come

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English foretācn ("foretoken, presage, prognostic, prodigy, sign, wonder"), equivalent to fore- +‎ token.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English *foretoknen, from Old English foretācnian ("to foreshow").

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Examples

  • Yet in that short, hopeful moment, she had felt him so near to her that it was as if his spirit had floated over the sea unto her, -- what is called a foretoken (_pressigne_) in Breton land; and she listened still more attentively to the steps outside, trusting that some one might come to her to speak of him.

    Great Sea Stories Various 1897

  • Yet in that short, hopeful moment she had felt him so near to her, that it was as if his spirit had floated over the sea unto her, what is called a foretoken (_pressigne_) in Breton land; and she listened still more attentively to the steps outside, trusting that some one might come to her to speak of him.

    An Iceland Fisherman Pierre Loti 1886

  • The first foretoken evidence of BPH is the frequency of requisite to urinate.

    CALL FOR TESTIMONIALS Steven Barnes 2009

  • The first foretoken evidence of BPH is the frequency of requisite to urinate.

    Links and Credits Theodora Goss 2009

  • They say that eclipses foretoken misfortune, because misfortunes are common, so that, as evil happens so often, they often foretell it; whereas if they said that they predict good fortune, they would often be wrong.

    Pens��es 1623-1662 1944

  • In one of his Advent sermons he said, "The heathen write that the comet may arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does not foretoken a sure calamity."

    A History of the warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom 1896

  • On the opposite side of the house, several hundred yards away, the country turnpike ran; and from this there now reached them the rumbling of many vehicles, hurrying in close procession out of the nearest town and moving toward smaller villages scattered over the country; to its hamlets and cross-roads and hundreds of homes richer or poorer -- every vehicle Christmas-laden: sign and foretoken of the

    Bride of the Mistletoe James Lane Allen 1887

  • Or contrast with Addison's Italian letters passages like these, which foretoken Rogers and Byron.

    A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century 1886

  • Thomson's denunciation of the slave trade, and of cruelty to animals, especially the caging of birds and the coursing of hares; his preference of country to town; his rhapsodies on domestic love and the innocence of the Golden Age; his contrast between the misery of the poor and the heartless luxury of the rich; all these features of the poem foretoken the sentimentalism of Sterne and Goldsmith, and the humanitarianism of

    A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century 1886

  • Vienna lectures of 1810 foretoken Ruskin's philippics against railways and factories.

    A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century 1886

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