foreshadow

Etymology

It is formed from English fore- + shadow.^[2][3][4][5] The noun was built later from the same two elements, after the verb.^[2][6] Old English had forescywa (“shadow”) and forescywung (“overshadowing”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

To represent imperfectly beforehand, to prefigure: 1577, in Thomas Vautrollier's translation of Luther's commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.^[2][3] Etymonline and Dictionary.com give the same period, the 1570s.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

The image is of a shadow thrown ahead of an advancing object, suggesting what is to come, and the verb was figurative from its first record.^[4][2][7] The OED has it first as serving as the shadow thrown before an object, and hence as representing something imperfectly beforehand;^[2] rarely it was used of a person having a foreboding.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged keeps the older idea of being the type or prototype of something later,^[3] while modern dictionaries of current usage stress a warning or a sign of a future event.^[8][9] The noun, an indication of something to come, followed in the 1830s.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1577 – to serve as the shadow thrown before an object; to prefigure.^[2][3]
• 1834 – noun, an indication of something to come, in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.^[2] Etymonline dates the noun to 1831.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To give a sign or warning of something beforehand; to presage: The first dry winds foreshadowed a hard summer.^[9][8][5]
2. To be a type or prototype of something later; to prefigure.^[3][6]

Noun

1. An indication or imperfect representation of something to come.^[2][6][3]
2. A shadow cast ahead of a thing.^[2][3]

Word family

• foreshadower

Related words

• overshadow

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Webster's New World College Dictionary (2014), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt