Word.ws English Dictionary

foretold

/ˈfɔɹ.toʊld/

foretold is the simple past and past participle of foretell.

foretold is the simple past and past participle of foretel.

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

Words formed from foretold

Questions about foretold

What is foretold the simple past and past participle of?
Foretold is the simple past and past participle of foretell.
How do you pronounce foretold?
Foretold is pronounced /ˈfɔɹ.toʊld/ (US).

Words near foretold in the dictionary

  1. foretokened
  2. foretokeneth
  3. foretokening
  4. foretokenings
  5. foretokens
  6. foretold
  7. foretoldest
  8. foretooth
  9. foretop
  10. foretopgallant
  11. foretopman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foretold (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-foretold.ogg.

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