Word.ws English Dictionary

forewinter

forewinter noun: the period immediately preceding or leading up to winter.

Noun

forewinter (plural forewinters)

  1. The period immediately preceding or leading up to winter.
    • Anybody seeing him all that forewinter long going about the sadder verges of the city might have rightly wondered what his trade was, this refugee reprieved from the river and its fishes. Haunting the streets in a castoff peacoat.2010, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, page 381
  2. The early part of winter.
    • The Early Winter, or Forewinter, period has a much less easily defined character, being dominated by alternations of progressive (W'ly or cyclonic) and blocked (anticyclonic) periods in Europe, […]2013, H. H. Lamb, Climate: Present, Past and Future

Forms of forewinter

pluralforewinters

Origin of forewinter

From fore- + winter. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Fóarwinter (“forewinter”), West Frisian foarwinter (“forewinter”), Dutch voorwinter (“forewinter”), German Vorwinter (“forewinter”), Danish forvinter (“forewinter”), Swedish förvinter (“forewinter”), Icelandic forvetur (“forewinter”).

Questions about forewinter

What does forewinter mean?
Forewinter means the period immediately preceding or leading up to winter.
What part of speech is forewinter?
Forewinter is a noun.
What is the plural of forewinter?
The plural of forewinter is forewinters.

Words near forewinter in the dictionary

  1. forewind
  2. forewinds
  3. forewing
  4. forewinged
  5. forewings
  6. forewinter
  7. forewinters
  8. forewisdom
  9. forewish
  10. forewished
  11. forewishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forewinter (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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