Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Foresight; providence.
  • To foresee.
  • To look ahead or forward.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb obsolete To look beforehand or forward.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To look beforehand, to preview.
  • verb To look foreward.
  • noun A preview.
  • noun Someone or something previewed.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English vorloken, forluken, equivalent to fore- +‎ look.

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Examples

  • I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in order to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of my paper -- that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past.

    Civics: as Applied Sociology Patrick Geddes 1893

  • To be the confidential friend in a hundred families in the town, -- cutting the social trifle, as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped syllabub to the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation," -- to keep abreast of the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best on Sunday to interweave that thought with the active life of an active town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life!

    If, Yes and Perhaps Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact Edward Everett Hale 1865

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