foredawn

foredawn noun: the time before dawn.

Noun

foredawn (plural foredawns)

The time before dawn.
- I opened the front door and went out into the foredawn, into the hissing of the silence and the humming of the underground trains standing empty with lighted windows on the far side of the common.1984, The Granta - Issues 12-13, page 231
- Condé innovates, or at least transforms, this structure to generate a response uttered in the speech of the Caribbean night: from dusk to foredawn (the deceased being evoked only at night?) in opposition to Faulkner's story “On the Road” (entirely typical of the American imaginary), the "story of a...2003, Tyler Stovall, Georges Van Den Abbeele, French Civilization and Its Discontents, page 164

foredawn (third-person singular simple present foredawns, present participle foredawning, simple past and past participle foredawned)

To anticipate dawning or emerging.
- I see in it a wonderful fulfillment of things and plans which have been foredawned in my mind, many years ago;1928, George Tobias Flom, Albert Morey Studtevant, Scandinavian Studies and Notes - Volumes 10-12, page 109
- The desiderium is the most certain Being and the only honourable quality of all men; the desiderium to give shape to that which foredawns so clearly, which questions in objects themselves and seeks its poet, with an as it were demanding gaze, is Having and Not-Having itself.1986, Ernst Bloch, The principle of hope - Volume 3, page 981

So when Gerald Owen heard the voice in the dark of foredawn, he had no idea that its instructions would come to naught.2014, Elizabeth Haydon, The Merchant Emperor: The Symphony of Ages:
Full, as they are, of murmurous silences in the foredawns And budding with the dawns in a noise of cranes2017, Fernando Pessoa, Poemas de Álvaro de Campos:

Noun
plural	foredawns
Verb
third-person singular present	foredawns
present participle	foredawning
past participle	foredawned
past	foredawned

From fore- + dawn.

What does foredawn mean?: Foredawn means the time before dawn.
How do you use foredawn in a sentence?: So when Gerald Owen heard the voice in the dark of foredawn, he had no idea that its instructions would come to naught.
What part of speech is foredawn?: Foredawn can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of foredawn?: The plural of foredawn is foredawns.

Adapted from Wiktionary: foredawn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “foredawn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foredawn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.