prefigure

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

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

Watching Road to Bali – and other titles in the series – you can see how much they prefigure the high-concept buddy comedies of Coming to America or Wedding Crashers several decades later.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 28, 2020

As an example, Alter cited Dr. Steiner’s assertion that “Antigone draws about herself an ethical solitude, a lucid dryness which seems to prefigure the stringencies of Kant.”

From Washington Post ● Feb. 5, 2020

Yet he sat for an hour or more on the veranda, smoking many pipes and trying as he could to prefigure the future in the light of the night's happenings.

From The Quickening by E. M. Ashe

The rumored price increases from Samsung were prefigured in a note on the stock by Citi analyst Peter Lee last week.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 6, 2026

This improbable gift was succeeded by a clock-radio—a Sony Dream Machine with a blue digital display in a sleek white cube that prefigured Apple’s austere aesthetic.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026

Indeed, the epic “Rock Show” prefigured McCartney’s plans for conquering the rock ‘n’ roll box office.

From Salon ● Mar. 21, 2025

It is widely understood to have prefigured the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the rise of modern conservatism.

From Slate ● Jan. 6, 2025

Their accoutrements prefigured in an absurd way the resources of the Confederacy at a later date.

From Gabriel Tolliver A Story of Reconstruction by Joel Chandler Harris

That’s one way to start a book—bracing and bitter, conveying Mary Cain’s scorn for the athletic-shoe-and-sportswear giant while prefiguring her larger message that “sports normalizes cruelty.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

Through his character, though, the show has also explored the impact of battlefield trauma, prefiguring the more explicitly mental health-conscious TV that we see today.

From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2022

Smith was prefiguring a national movement that would open more roles to artists of color.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 10, 2022

You mention them as prefiguring the activism of the Freedom Summer.

From Salon ● Apr. 10, 2022

Thus the father spoke, and knew not that he spoke prefiguring words: for soon after the delicate child, with the morning brightness of his early wisdom, was exhaled, like a dewdrop, into heaven.

From The Campaner Thal and Other Writings by Jean Paul