[f. FORE- pref. + GONE, pa. pple. of GO.] That has gone before or gone by; (of time) past.
c. 1600. Shaks., Sonnet xxx.
| Then can I greeue at greeuances fore-gon, | |
| And heauily from woe to woe tell ore | |
| The sad account of *fore-bemoned mone, | |
| Which I new pay, as if not payd before. |
1656. Cowley, Pindaric Odes, I. iii.
| And with Oblivion’s silent Stroke deface | |
| Of foregone Ills the very Trace. |
1794. Burke, Rep. Lord’s Comm., Wks. 1842, II. 610. The mere result upon each case decided by the lords, furnished them with no light from any principle, precedent, or foregone authority of law or reason, to guide them with regard to the next matter of evidence which they had to offer, or to discriminate what matter ought to be urged, or to be set aside.
1824. Lamb, Elia, Ser. II. Capt. Jackson. You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag—cold savings from the foregone meal—remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented.
1870. Lowell, Cathedral, Poet Wks. (1879), 441/2.
| This has made poets dream of lives foregone | |
| In worlds fantastical, more fair than ours. |
b. Foregone conclusion: a Shakespearian phrase, variously interpreted by commentators (see CONCLUSION 15). Now used for: A decision or opinion already formed before the case is argued or the full evidence known (hence foregone intention, opinion, etc.); also, a result or upshot that might have been foreseen as inevitable.
1604. Shaks., Oth., III. iii. 428.
| Oth. But this denoted a fore-gone conclusion, | |
| ’Tis a shrew’d doubt, though it be but a Dreame. |
1821. Lamb, Elia, Ser. I. New Years Eve. I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions.
1856. Froude, Hist. Eng. (1858), I. iii. 286. Starting always with a foregone conclusion, he arrived of course where he wished to arrive.
1868. J. H. Blunt, Ref. Ch. Eng., I. 186. She [Catherine] openly declared that Cranmer was a ‘shadow’ and his court a ‘mockery,’ plainly considering that the Archbishop was simply carrying out pro formâ the foregone intention of the King.
1878. Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 387. That struggle was heroic, desperate, and superhuman, but the conclusion was foregone.
Hence Foregoneness. (nonce-wd.)
1892. Athenæum, 6 Aug., 191/2. And a much more satisfactory as well as much more definite idea of his historical powers could, as it seems to us, have been obtained by surveying, if with a little less minuteness, the whole, than by this microscopical investigation of a book doubtless of great merit, and doubtless also not ill-informed, but affected, and that favourably, by the ‘foregoneness’ of its conclusion and by the fallacies of its major premise.
