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

Its remaining original construction — in the vernacular idiom, with touches that prefigure the Baroque, and an Orientalist flared red ceramic tile roof — dates to the late 1500s.

From New York Times ● Sep. 24, 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

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

Enough has been already done to show the course by which the tide is to flow, to prefigure for languages their proportions, and for nations to trace their distribution.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 by Various

“That selectivity is prefigured, and preprogrammed, by the history of Christendom.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026

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

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

They did not expect what this vocabulary prefigured for their lives.

From Salon ● Sep. 24, 2024

Was not the whole prefigured, messieurs, quand le grand poète forged the very thunderbolts of the Dieu des Cieux?

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867. by Various

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

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

From Salon ● Apr. 10, 2022

In 2017, Democrats made unexpected gains in the House of Delegates with candidates who were predominantly women and minorities, prefiguring the national trend of more diverse candidate pools.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 22, 2021

Inevitably, one of the pods eventually malfunctioned, trapping a musician inside and prefiguring a famous scene from “This Is Spinal Tap.”

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 12, 2017

There are certain essences mentioned in the Old Testament prefiguring the Virgin.

From The Cathedral by J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans