Word.ws English Dictionary

foreshape

foreshape verb: to shape or mould beforehand; prepare in advance.

Verb

foreshape (third-person singular simple present foreshapes, present participle foreshaping, simple past and past participle foreshaped)

  1. (transitive) To shape or mould beforehand; prepare in advance.
    • Thought forecasts and foreshapes experiment, and traces out the consequences as they arise, comparing them with the sharp directness of its expectations.1867, The British controversialist and literary magazine, page 403
    • What the self is to become thereby ceases to be a fate that haunts it or lies ambuscaded in its circumstances, for the self can foreshape its own career and reality.1998, J. Melvin Woody, Freedom's Embrace - Page 79

Noun

foreshape (plural not attested)

  1. (no plural) A forward or projecting form, piece, or shape.
    • [...] wherein this component means is in the form of a module, structurally comprises the forward nose portion of said weapon, and has a lenticular cross section with a foreshape conforming to a Sears-Haack half-body profile of least drag in width and thickness, [...]1982, Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office: Patents, volume 1018, number 1, page 158

Forms of foreshape

third-person singular presentforeshapes
present participleforeshaping
past participleforeshaped
pastforeshaped

Origin of foreshape

From fore- + shape.

Questions about foreshape

What does foreshape mean?
Foreshape means to shape or mould beforehand; prepare in advance.
What part of speech is foreshape?
Foreshape can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of foreshape?
The past tense of foreshape is foreshaped.

Words near foreshape in the dictionary

  1. foreshaft
  2. foreshafts
  3. foreshame
  4. foreshank
  5. foreshanks
  6. foreshape
  7. foresheet
  8. foresheets
  9. foreshew
  10. foreshewed
  11. foreshewer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foreshape (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.

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