Dictionary

forehear en · VERB

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *preh₂-der. Proto-Indo-European *pr̥h₂éy Proto-Germanic *furai Proto-Germanic *furai- Proto-West Germanic *forē- Old English fore- Middle English fore- English fore- Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂ṓws Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱh₂owsyéti Proto-Germanic *hauzijaną Proto-West Germanic *hauʀijan Old English hīeran Middle English heren English hear English forehear From fore- + hear.

Meanings

1. (intransitive, transitive) To hear beforehand.
   • Holiday labor at the island today: being his guest is a hazardous responsibility: I foresee a swell and forelean to a spumy pitch and forehear the scuff of a badly perched sack of cement as it slips into the racing bay, and my New York imagination […] 2014, Joseph McElroy, Ancient History: A Paraphrase:
   • […] mingled into one beautiful and continuous peal of that earthly harmony which Heaven has given us as a forehearing of those sublimer harmonies that, in its everlasting bowers, take the imprisoned soul, "and lap it in elysium." 1837 January 14, “The Pleasures of Winter”, in The Spirit and Manners of the Age, volume 3:
   • In that flash of time as his fingers had touched the handle of the table-spoon, he had foreseen John's wild rush to the doors, he had foreheard John's agitated cry of "Thieves! Police! Burglars!" 1905, Margaret Westrup, “Billy's Long Day”, in The Idler, volume 26, page 604:

Forms

Deriveds

unforeheard