Word.ws English Dictionary

foreshowing

foreshowing is the present participle and gerund of foreshow.

Meaning of foreshow

Verb

foreshow (third-person singular simple present foreshows, present participle foreshowing, simple past foreshowed, past participle foreshown)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To show in advance; to foretell, predict.
    • Amid his senses' giddy wheel, / Did he not desperate impulse feel, / Headlong to plunge himself below, / And meet the worst his fears foreshow?— […]1810, Walter Scott, “Canto II. The Island.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William...
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To foreshadow or prefigure.
    • But if the rays break forth out of the middle, or dispersed, and its exterior body, or the out parts of it, be covered with clouds, it foreshows great tempests both of wind and rain.1841, Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu, The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England

See all 3 meanings of foreshow

Noun

foreshowing (countable and uncountable, plural foreshowings)

  1. The act or an instance of showing something, usually an event, ahead of time; a prognostication
    • foreshowings and prophecies

Forms of foreshowing

Verb
alternative form (archaic)foreshewing
Noun
pluralforeshowings

Origin of foreshowing

From foreshow + -ing.

From Middle English forshowyng, forshewyng, foresceuing, foresceawunge, from Old English foresċēawung, equivalent to foreshow + -ing.

Questions about foreshowing

What does foreshowing mean?
Foreshowing means the act or an instance of showing something, usually an event, ahead of time; a prognostication.
What is foreshowing the present participle and gerund of?
Foreshowing is the present participle and gerund of foreshow.
What part of speech is foreshowing?
Foreshowing is a noun.
What is the plural of foreshowing?
The plural of foreshowing is foreshowings.

Words near foreshowing in the dictionary

  1. foreshoulders
  2. foreshow
  3. foreshowed
  4. foreshower
  5. foreshowers
  6. foreshowing
  7. foreshowings
  8. foreshown
  9. foreshows
  10. foreside
  11. foresides

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foreshowing (page history and authors); foreshow (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: “foreshowing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foreshowing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.