foretaste
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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foretastes,
present (3rd person singular)
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foretasted,
past participle, past
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foretasting
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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foretastesimple
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foretastessimple
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have foretastedperfect
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has foretastedperfect
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am foretastingprogressive
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are foretastingprogressive
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is foretastingprogressive
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have been foretastingperfect progressive
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has been foretastingperfect progressive
Past
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foretastedsimple
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had foretastedperfect
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was foretastingprogressive
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were foretastingprogressive
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had been foretastingperfect progressive
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
According to the Olympic Studies Center, at this point “they play a double role: In addition to announcing the Games, they provide a foretaste of their visual identity.”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 4, 2024
“A foretaste of the future,” said Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.
From New York Times ● Jul. 29, 2023
I wondered if this was a foretaste of the incomprehension I had been promised.
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
Such innocence in such darkness, such purity in such an embrace; such foretastes of heaven are possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of little children.
From The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo
But, ah! the way thither is not so easy; and these heavenly foretastes remain only a short time in the souls of children, as well as of grown people.
From The Home by Mary (Mary Botham) Howitt
No act of holy obedience is here left without foretastes of joy, which, though they be but 'brooks by the way,' contain the same water of life which hereafter swells to an ocean.
From Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII by Alexander Maclaren
These distant and prolonged separations seem like foretastes of death....
From Records of a Girlhood by Fanny Kemble
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
Between night and noonday there has been the dawn, with its searching illumination, its thrill of faith, the rapture of self-sacrifice in which anchorite and martyr foretasted the joys of heaven.
From A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) by Mrs. Sutherland Orr
She foretasted the day when a vulgar prefix would no longer attach to her name, and when the journals of society would reflect her rising effulgence.
From The Odd Women by George Gissing
For herself she was unafraid, she foretasted entire success.
From Red Masquerade by Louis Joseph Vance
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
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
Instantly she knew, with that foretasting mind of hers, that the man peering over the policeman's shoulder and Johnny Two-Hawks had met somewhere that day.
From The Drums of Jeopardy by Harold MacGrath
"Am I the sun, dear?" he asked, foretasting the delight of listening to her simple answer.
From The Witch of Prague by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
