forebode
Americanverb (used with object)
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forebodes,
present (3rd person singular)
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foreboded,
past participle, past
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foreboding
present participle
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to foretell or predict; be an omen of; indicate beforehand; portend.
clouds that forebode a storm.
- Synonyms:
- augur, forecast, presage, foreshadow
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to have a strong inner feeling or notion of (a future misfortune, evil, catastrophe, etc.); have a presentiment of.
verb (used without object)
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forebodes,
present (3rd person singular)
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foreboded,
past participle, past
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foreboding
present participle
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to prophesy.
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to have a presentiment.
verb
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to warn of or indicate (an event, result, etc) in advance
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to have an intuition or premonition of (an event)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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forebodesimple
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forebodessimple
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have forebodedperfect
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has forebodedperfect
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am forebodingprogressive
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are forebodingprogressive
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is forebodingprogressive
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have been forebodingperfect progressive
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has been forebodingperfect progressive
Past
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forebodedsimple
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had forebodedperfect
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was forebodingprogressive
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were forebodingprogressive
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had been forebodingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of forebode
Vocabulary lists containing forebode
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
During the present year the Irish newspapers reported the discovery of the apparition of a black pig in the district of Kiltrustan… which caused much alarm, and was supposed to forebode some serious national disaster.
From Nature ● Dec. 17, 2018
Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not.
From Time Magazine Archive
The police, whenever my mother forebode, would indeed come, and many of the men of the yard would be caught napping, surrendering themselves with lamblike submission.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
The leading company rode off as swiftly as they could, for it was still deep dark, whatever change Wídfara might forebode.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
Prēsage′, to forebode: to warn of something to come: to predict.—v.i. to have a presentiment of.—adj.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
It’s 1833 in Friel’s fictional small town, Ballybeg, where a sweet, putrid smell rising from the potato fields forebodes famine and an ingress of redcoats threatens to blight the local heritage.
From New York Times ● Dec. 11, 2023
A Game 7 loss at home for the fourth season in a row — 2-1 to the Nashville Predators in the first round Wednesday — forebodes consequences potentially more severe than previous years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 28, 2016
‘You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.’
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
A comet sometimes forebodes wars, and sometimes mere brawls!
From Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by George Rapall Noyes
If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.
From Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston
The sky was utterly dark, and the stillness of the heavy air foreboded storm.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
But it is foreboded that that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
And so the victim of imagination was delivered from the storm of persecution which he had foreboded would be renewed on the succeeding day.
From Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Volume II (of 2) by Thomas Cooper
He knew that it foreboded national convulsions and throes.
From Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; A Study in Ethics, with an Epilogue Addressed to Theologians by Clark S. Beardslee
But the dispositions which mingled with my sorrow foreboded its transient duration.
From Discipline by Mary Brunton
Her show has all the trappings of true-crime podcasts you’ve heard before—911 tape-recordings, foreboding music—but here’s the difference: The women at the center of these crimes are telling us their experiences.
From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2026
In Atlanta, her visionary cosmologies read as foreboding, otherworldly—paradise lost.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2026
Since then, he feels a sense of foreboding whenever dark clouds signal the onset of another storm.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
But Yangskit says she had a strange sense of foreboding that night: "I wondered if I was ever going to see him again."
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
I knew now the reason for my sense of foreboding.
From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
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