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 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
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
With this fact navigators are well acquainted; and therefore a fall in the sea-water thermometer may forebode that shallow water is at hand.
From A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility by Henry Negretti
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
Now death with all its Terrors disappears, And all I fear 's a dreadful Something-after; My Mind forebodes a horrid, woful Scene, Where Guilt is chain'd and tortur'd with Despair.
From Ponteach The Savages of America by Montrose Jonas Moses
Every one forebodes disasters; but none think of reforming their lives in order to escape the threatened evil.
From Tales From the 'Phantasus', etc. of Ludwig Tieck by Ludwig Tieck
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
The sky was utterly dark, and the stillness of the heavy air foreboded storm.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
George, who already foreboded the miseries which were awaiting us, would have started that moment, leaving both horses and carts; but I could not entertain such an idea as that.
From The Pl?biscite or, A Miller's Story of the War by Alexandre Chatrian
The man did not understand this, but it 282 foreboded trouble.
From Carolyn of the Corners by Ruth Belmore Endicott
His heart, I ween, foreboded the deed that had been done, And that the childless father no more should see his son.
From The Nibelungenlied Revised Edition by Unknown
Then, with the foreboding intro and the tapping heel of a bedazzled platform pump, the delicious reveal of Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter singing “Sweet Transvestite” cemented that this experience would bond us for life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
But a 0.1-percent dip in food services sales could reflect that people are opting to drive less -- a foreboding sign for broader spending in the services sector.
From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026
In contrast, DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, concluded its answers to a user’s questions about weapons selection with a foreboding farewell.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
Our trusted sources in Iran spoke with opposition activists, human rights lawyers and independent journalists and found a mood of foreboding.
From BBC ● May 3, 2026
Here however it was peacetime and the family in the Plymouth traveled without fear or foreboding.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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.
