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Showing results for foretaste.
Synonyms

foretaste

American  
[fawr-tayst, fohr-, fawr-tayst, fohr-] / ˈfɔrˌteɪst, ˈfoʊr-, fɔrˈteɪst, foʊr- /

noun

  1. a slight and partial experience, knowledge, or taste of something to come in the future; anticipation.


verb (used with object)

  • foretastes,
    present (3rd person singular)
  • foretasted,
    past participle,  past
  • foretasting
    present participle
  1. to have some advance experience or knowledge of (something to come).

foretaste British  

noun

  1. an early but limited experience or awareness of something to come

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

verb

  1. (tr) to have a foretaste of

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future


Etymology

Origin of foretaste

First recorded in 1400–50, foretaste is from the late Middle English word fortaste. See fore-, taste


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:

That is a foretaste of what analysts say will be a growing pool of debt tied to data centers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2025

That applies whether you think the current troubles are just a blip or a foretaste of the job losses that technological changes are bringing to the industry, she said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2024

“But if this a foretaste of the feast to come, then we’re in massive trouble.”

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 26, 2023

“A foretaste of the future,” said Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.

From New York Times ● Jul. 29, 2023

There were application forms, twenty pages long, and thick, densely printed admission handbooks from Edinburgh and London whose methodical, exacting prose seemed to be a foretaste of a new kind of academic rigor.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan

As spare and considered as their Morton Feldman score, these solos aren’t just foretastes of 1960s Judson Dance Theater; they could easily be the work of a present-day postmodernist like Beth Gill.

From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2022

What more can the finest poetry achieve in quickening the things of earth into tokens and foretastes of heaven, with glimpses of higher life and ethereal worlds.

From The Complete Book of Cheese by Robert Carlton Brown

Thus before the great change takes place the nymph has foretastes of the aerial mode of breathing which it will practise when the perfect stage shall have been attained.

From The Life-Story of Insects by George H. (George Herbert) Carpenter

These distant and prolonged separations seem like foretastes of death....

From Records of a Girlhood by Fanny Kemble

These aërial journeys may be foretastes of those we shall make after we are freed from the incumbrance of avoirdupois.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858 by Various

At the same time, Auburn University officials say the school is expected to maintain consistent undergraduate enrollment at about 25,000 students with no significant growth foretasted.

From Washington Times ● Dec. 10, 2019

Adam foretasted comfort for himself and his descendants.

From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

He caught, unconsciously, the serenity of her mood, and foretasted the peace which her being would bring to him if it were ever intrusted to his hands.

From The Story of Kennett by Bayard Taylor

What is dearer than the joy foretasted at the first imaginings of school?

From The Reform of Education by Giovanni Gentile

Every detail of work and play is colored by expectation, as if the relief of vacation were already foretasted.

From For Greater Things; the story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka by William Terence Kane

All her plans, all her dreams, all her sweet foretasting sprang up before her, mocking her; all the intolerable sympathy of her friends, all the secret laughter it would hide, came at her, twisting her.

From The Happy Warrior by A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth) Hutchinson

We need much humility, wisdom, and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven within us.

From Christian Science by Mark Twain

In that lonely little closet of his, Pierre foretasted all that this world hath either of praise or dispraise; and thus foretasting both goblets, anticipatingly hurled them both in its teeth.

From Pierre; or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville

Even our soberer thoughts are very much given to following the possible fortunes of some enterprise, and foretasting the satisfactions of love and ambition.

From The Sense of Beauty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory by George Santayana

She was already foretasting the dreariness of life without the critical, corrective, and withal stimulating presence of her elder child.

From Kildares of Storm by Eleanor Mercein Kelly

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