English edit

Etymology edit

From fore- +‎ dream.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

foredream (plural foredreams)

  1. a dream dreamt in advance, especially regarding a future condition or event; a hopeful expectation; a hope
    • 1833, The British Magazine and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information, Parochial History, and Documents Respecting the State of the Poor, Progress of Education, &c, Volume 4:
      [] with its impressive motto, were all subservient to that grave and visioned mood in which the moral thought of this life, and foredream of the next, steal with a luxurious melancholy over the heart.
    • 2010, Alison Croggon, The Riddle: The Second Book of Pellinor:
      She remembered her terrible foredream of the sack of Turbansk and felt a suffocating despair rising in her breast.
    • 2013, Wendell Berry, This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979 - 2012:
      We piece a foredream of the gathered light Infinitely small and great to shelter all, []

Verb edit

foredream (third-person singular simple present foredreams, present participle foredreaming, simple past and past participle foredreamed or foredreamt)

  1. (transitive) to dream beforehand, especially as a premonition
    • 1899, Francis Marion Crawford, Via crucis: a romance of the second crusade:
      She had used the only means, and the strongest means, of bringing Gilbert back to France; she had foredreamt his coming, she had foreknown that from the first he would ask for Beatrix; []
    • 1964, Jacob Trapp, Modern religious poems, a contemporary anthology:
      Foredreaming the faith of the future, He knew and preached the truth: []
    • 1996, Robert Alan Segal, Psychology and Myth:
      With regard to dreams, there is one interesting fact to be noted here: the belief, namely, that in prophetic dreams of death it will always be a veyola (real kinsman), usually the sister's son, who will foredream his uncle's death.
    • 2013, George Gissing, Delphi Complete Works of George Gissing (Illustrated):
      [] but the marriage of Basil with a Goth, his renunciation of Catholicism, and with it the Imperial cause, were greater things, and together with their attainment she foredreamt the greatest of all, Totila's complete conquest of Italy.

Anagrams edit