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
Summer 2023 has been a fascinating foretaste of a future under a changing climate.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 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
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
Shop windows, freshly decked, tempted the passerby with foretastes of the season's styles in gowns and hats and furs.
From Destiny by Charles Neville Buck
All I have undergone, transports of passion, Longings and fears, the horrors of remorse, The shame of being spurn'd with contumely, Were feeble foretastes of my present torments.
From Phaedra by Robert Bruce Boswell
"We shall see him as he is," says the apostle; and some foretastes of that transcendent revelation are vouchsafed us here on earth.
From Know the Truth; A critique of the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation by Jesse H. Jones
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
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
The old author long ago foretasted this, who wrote,—"The divine arts of printing and gunpowder have frightened away Robin Goodfellow, and all the fairies."
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various
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
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
I have never committed a burglary, but since the moment when I creaked past the drawing-room door, foretasting the instant when it would open, my sympathies are dedicated to burglars.
From All on the Irish Shore Irish Sketches by E. Oe. (Edith Oenone) Somerville
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
Confident of success, they were foretasting gleefully the terror of the stream at sight of the blessed image entering its waters.
From The Torrent Entre Naranjos by Isaac Goldberg
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.
