prefigure
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to show or represent beforehand by a figure or type; foreshadow.
-
to picture or represent to oneself beforehand; imagine.
verb
-
to represent or suggest in advance
-
to imagine or consider beforehand
Other Word Forms
- prefigurative adjective
- prefiguratively adverb
- prefigurativeness noun
- prefigurement noun
- unprefigured adjective
Etymology
Origin of prefigure
1400–50; late Middle English < Late Latin praefigūrāre. See pre-, figure (v.)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That certainly wasn’t the first time a Leonard Cohen song seemed to prefigure events that had not happened, or to capture a global state of mind before it fully coalesced.
From Salon • Jan. 21, 2025
But even as the spare language of her lines endows them with a monumental feel, their brevity and levity also prefigure the semiotically fraught short exchanges of the texting era.
From Washington Post • Nov. 17, 2021
People who have received the shots two to four weeks earlier should watch for symptoms that may prefigure the onset of clotting.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 13, 2021
Such discourse could prefigure new restrictions on speech in Hong Kong, a possibility that seems to be inching incrementally closer.
From New York Times • Nov. 23, 2019
Now follows a series of miraculous signs, prodigies, mad doings, which prefigure the coming destruction.
From Homer's Odyssey A Commentary by Snider, Denton Jaques
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
