Word.ws English Dictionary

lookahead

lookahead noun: the analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.

Noun

lookahead (countable and uncountable, plural lookaheads)

  1. The analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.
    • Our computer chess program uses lookahead to avoid difficult endgames.
  2. (regular expressions) The analysis of the subsequent characters before the regular expression is matched.

Forms of lookahead

plurallookaheads

Origin of lookahead

Deverbal from look ahead.

Words formed from lookahead

Phrases with lookahead

Questions about lookahead

What does lookahead mean?
Lookahead means the analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.
What part of speech is lookahead?
Lookahead is a noun.
What is the plural of lookahead?
The plural of lookahead is lookaheads.

Words near lookahead in the dictionary

  1. look-sees
  2. look-up
  3. look-ups
  4. lookability
  5. lookable
  6. lookahead
  7. lookahead time
  8. lookahead times
  9. lookaheads
  10. lookalike
  11. lookalikes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lookahead (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-uk-lookahead.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lookahead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lookahead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.