Word.ws English Dictionary

foresong

foresong noun: a song sung as an opener to an event or story; prelude.

Noun

foresong (plural foresongs)

  1. A song sung as an opener to an event or story; prelude
    • A "Foresong" precedes, and an "Aftersong" follows, but the "Vision" itself is comprised in "A Song of Songs."1902, The Sewanee Review, volumes 1-10
    • Descender from the plains, ultimate moon of all flames, from tumescences of fruit and flower dropping, darkened your face already— fool or baptist, summer's fool, echoer, necrologue, or foresong of glaciers, anyway nutcracker, sedge-cutter, ponderer of platitudes—[...]1960, Gottfried Benn, Primal Vision

Examples of foresong in a sentence

  • For the smiles across their oiled, blackened faces, a foresong to the future; the loincloth across their groins, only resplendent of an uneducated, poverty-stricken youth.2003, Neelima Wig, Daybreak:
  • But when the speaker resolves his foresong into a claim of predilection for the life (and poetics) of love, he does so.2012, Barbara K. Gold, A Companion to Roman Love Elegy:
  • Swinburne never published a volume entitled Songs of Democracy, but the third section of “Christmas Antiphones,” “Beyond Church,” is in Swinburne's terms “a foresong of democracy and humanity.”2013, Oscar Wilde, Matthew Hofer, Oscar Wilde in America:

Forms of foresong

pluralforesongs

Origin of foresong

From fore- + song.

Questions about foresong

What does foresong mean?
Foresong means a song sung as an opener to an event or story; prelude.
How do you use foresong in a sentence?
For the smiles across their oiled, blackened faces, a foresong to the future; the loincloth across their groins, only resplendent of an uneducated, poverty-stricken youth.
What part of speech is foresong?
Foresong is a noun.
What is the plural of foresong?
The plural of foresong is foresongs.

Words near foresong in the dictionary

  1. foresnaffled
  2. foresnaffles
  3. foresnaffling
  4. foresnatch
  5. foresnatching
  6. foresong
  7. foresongs
  8. foresought
  9. foresound
  10. foresounds
  11. forespace

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foresong (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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