forehear

English

Etymology

From fore- +‎ hear.

Verb

forehear (third-person singular simple present forehears, present participle forehearing, simple past and past participle foreheard)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To hear beforehand.
   • 1837 January, “The Pleasures of Winter”, in The Spirit and Manners of the Age‎^[1], volume 3:

     […] mingled into one beautiful and continuous peal of that earthly harmony which Heaven has given us as a forehearing of those sublimer harmonies that, in its everlasting bowers, take the imprisoned soul, "and lap it in elysium."

   • 1905, Margaret Westrup, “Billy's Long Day”, in The Idler‎^[2], volume 26, page 604:

     In that flash of time as his fingers had touched the handle of the table-spoon, he had foreseen John's wild rush to the doors, he had foreheard John's agitated cry of "Thieves! Police! Burglars!"

   • 2014, Joseph McElroy, Ancient History: A Paraphrase:

     Holiday labor at the island today: being his guest is a hazardous responsibility: I foresee a swell and forelean to a spumy pitch and forehear the scuff of a badly perched sack of cement as it slips into the racing bay, and my New York imagination […]

References

• “forehear”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.