forerunner

[ fawr-ruhn-er, fohr-, fawr-ruhn-er, fohr- ]

noun

1. predecessor; ancestor; forebear; precursor.
2. an omen, sign, or indication of something to follow; portent:

   The warm evenings were a forerunner of summer.

3. a person who goes or is sent in advance to announce the coming of someone or something that follows; herald; harbinger.
4. the Forerunner, John the Baptist.

forerunner

/ ˈfɔːˌrʌnə /

noun

1. a person or thing that precedes another; precursor
2. a person or thing coming in advance to herald the arrival of someone or something; harbinger
3. an indication beforehand of something to follow; omen; portent

Word History and Origins

Origin of forerunner¹

First recorded in 1250–1300, forerunner is from the Middle English word forrenner. See fore-, runner

Example Sentences

Whatever becomes of the quest for artificial general intelligence, it seems there’s still plenty of room to run for its more vocational forerunners.

From Singularity Hub 

They’re most interesting as forerunners to other, better Taylor Swift songs.

From Washington Post

How it evolved, and where its forerunners came from, is up for debate.

From Popular-Science

The EU, a forerunner on climate policy, has pledged to make the bloc’s economic recovery “green.”

From Fortune

The researchers showed that, elaborate as that chemical mechanism is in cells today, nearly all the ingredients for a potential forerunner to it could have formed easily from just two simple organic compounds reacting in water.

From Quanta Magazine

Melchior is the forerunner of the aunt who always gave me socks.

From The Daily Beast

Turing conceived and built a computer, the forerunner of all digital computations, that cracked the code.

From The Daily Beast

By contrast, Ashraf Ghani, the current forerunner in the partial second round results, got record support in Pashtun areas.

From The Daily Beast

The organization started by Norquist is a forerunner to the Tea Party.

From The Daily Beast

I see Dickens as the forerunner to people like Chaplin and Woody Allen, really.

From The Daily Beast

It may be a forerunner or successor, the cause or consequence, or a contemporaneous fact, etc.

From Project Gutenberg

Poniatowski's campaign against Austria, glorious as it was for the Poles, was in reality the forerunner of disaster.

From Project Gutenberg

Forerunner of the many first-aid classes to come was that hour of Mabel's, and made memorable by one thing she said.

From Project Gutenberg

Nobody dreamed at that time that the little tool was the forerunner of a great change.

From Project Gutenberg

This is the first attempt at an anthology of Yorkshire poetry, and the forerunner of many other anthologies.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• precursor