futures

Noun

future (countable and uncountable, plural futures)

1. The time ahead; those moments yet to be experienced.
   • This solitary attitude stems in part from a deep sense of fatalism and futility, a profound social effect of the genophage that caused krogan numbers to dwindle to a relative handful. Not only are they angry that the entire galaxy seems out to get them, the krogan are also generally pessimistic...2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Krogan: Culture Codex entry

   Synonyms:

   to-come

2. Something that will happen in moments yet to come.
3. Goodness in what is yet to come. Something to look forward to.
   • There is no future in dwelling on the past.
4. The likely prospects for or fate of someone or something in time to come.
   • Again, it's unlikely they will return to traffic, but futures have been secured for four that will be heading to heritage railways [...].2020 May 20, John Crosse, “Soon to be gone... but never forgotten”, in Rail, page 63
5. Verb tense used to talk about events that will happen in the future; future tense.
6. An object that retrieves the value of a promise.

See all 8 meanings of future

Noun

futures contract (plural futures contracts)

1. A standardized contract, traded on a futures exchange, to buy or sell a standardized quantity of a specified commodity (or financial instrument) of standardized quality at a certain date in the future, at a stated price (the futures price).
   • He led the way with futures contracts (by which buyer and seller fix a price, immune from market fluctuations, for commodities that do not even exist at the time, such as crops yet to be sown) when these were exotic financial instruments few had hitherto tried.2022, Hernan Diaz, Trust, Picador (2023), page 139

   Synonyms:

   futures