Word.ws English Dictionary

foretel

foretel is the obsolete spelling of foretell.

Meaning of foretell

Verb

foretell (third-person singular simple present foretells, present participle foretelling, simple past and past participle foretold)

  1. (ambitransitive) To predict; to tell (the future) before it occurs; to prophesy.
    • Deeds then undone me faithful tongue foretold.1725–1726, Homer, “Book 2”, in [William Broome, Elijah Fenton, Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    foresay, forespeak
  2. (transitive) To tell (a person) of the future.
    • […] there came to him a Person named Saul, whom Samuel had never before seen; but God made him know it was the same he had foretold him of.1739, Edward Button, Rudiments of Ancient History

Forms of foretel

third-person singular presentforetels
present participleforetelling
past participleforetold
pastforetold

Questions about foretel

What is foretel the obsolete spelling of?
Foretel is the obsolete spelling of foretell.

Words near foretel in the dictionary

  1. foreteaches
  2. foreteaching
  3. foreteam
  4. foreteams
  5. foreteeth
  6. foretel
  7. foretell
  8. foretellable
  9. foreteller
  10. foretellers
  11. foretellest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foretel (page history and authors); foretell (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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