English edit

Etymology edit

From fore- +‎ grasp.

Noun edit

foregrasp (uncountable)

  1. A prior cognizance or understanding; an awareness or comprehension beforehand.
    • 2010, Melvin Pollner, Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse:
      Each of these terms is the product of the irony which comes from having obtained a foregrasp of mundaneity while attempting to articulate mundaneity within the idiom which mundaneity supports.

Verb edit

foregrasp (third-person singular simple present foregrasps, present participle foregrasping, simple past and past participle foregrasped)

  1. (transitive) To grasp beforehand.
    • 2007, George MacDonald, Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul:
      Thy great deliverance is a greater thing Than purest imagination can foregrasp; A thing beyond all conscious hungering, Beyond all hope that makes the poet sing.