Forebode

v. [f. FORE- pref. + BODE v.]

  1.  trans. To announce beforehand, predict, prognosticate.

1664.  Butler, Hud., II. iii. 172.

1709.  Steele, Tatler, No. 30, ¶ 5. To Morrow will be a Day of Battle, and something forebodes in my Breast that I shall fall in it.

1816.  J. Wilson, City of Plague, III. i.

1879.  Dixon, Windsor, I. xxvi. 265. Old men foreboded evil days to come.

  b.  Of things: To betoken, portend.

1656.  Cowley, Pindaric Odes, Isa. XXXIV. v.

1718.  Free-thinker, No. 62, 24 Oct., ¶ 7. Palpitations of the Heart betokened no Good; and, particularly, foreboded the Infidelity of a Friend.

1780.  Cowper, Progr. Err., 604.

1868.  E. Edwards, Raleigh, I. xiii. 254. The worth of the despatch lies in the proof it gives that the Earl’s administration of Irish affairs foreboded at its outset the issue which the foolish truce with Tyrone precipitated.

  2.  To feel a secret premonition of, have a presentiment of (usually evil); to anticipate, to apprehend beforehand. Const. simple obj. or subord. cl.

1603.  Knolles, Hist. Turks (1621), 235. You see the dangers and injuries I endure in this my journey, and my mind forbodeth greater to ensue: for which causes I may not goe any further, but here returne.

1677.  Horneck, Gt. Law Consid., v. (1704), 271. This was not so much a Dream, as an evil Conscience, which foreboded an all-revenging Arm, as soon as his Soul should enter into the Region of Spirits.

1725.  Pope, Odyss., IX. 248.

1793.  Ld. Sheffield, in Ld. Auckland’s Corr. (1862), III. 118. I foreboded mischief the moment I heard of its division.

1848.  Dickens, Dombey, 341. She often looked with compassion, at such a time, upon the stragglers who came wandering into London, by the great highway hard-by, and who, foot-sore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before them, as if foreboding that their misery there would be but as a drop of water in the sea, or as a grain of sea-sand on the shore, went shrinking on, cowering before the angry weather, and looking as if the very elements rejected them.

1895.  M. Corelli, Sorrows Satan, 321. ‘Now’ was evidently Mavis’s motto,—to lose no moment, but to work, to pray, to love, to hope, to thank God and be glad for life, all in the ‘Now’—and neither to regret the past nor forebode the future, but simply do the best that could be done, and leave all else in child-like confidence to the Divine Will.

  b.  intr. or absol. To conjecture, forecast.

1711.  Addison, Spect., No. 7, 8 March, ¶ 4. One of these Antiquated Sibyls, that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the Year to the other.

1782.  Cowper, Gilpin, 166.

1850.  Hawthorne, Scarlet L., x. (1892), 161. There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart.

  Hence Foreboded ppl. a. Also † Forebode sb., Forebodement, a foreboding.

a. 1679.  T. Goodwin, Wks., II. IV. 72. There is upon many forebodes, and seeming more than probabilities, out of the Revelation, one great Fate to come upon the Churches of Christ.

1755.  Johnson, Presagement, forebodement, presension.

1853.  M. Arnold, Poems, World’s Triumphs, iii.

1860.  Adler, Fauriel’s Prov. Poetry, xi. 234. He too was wont to tremble at every forebodement, and always had his reasons for declining combat.