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

Early on, when the heroine, the novice Isabella, is introduced with a prayer, the music seems to prefigure “Parsifal.”

From New York Times ● Jun. 26, 2022

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

But Warner Bros has undergone a series of personnel shake-ups under Stankey that prefigure the HBO Max controversy.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 9, 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

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

“It is true,” writes Preger, “that Dante saw these two women prefigured in a dream as Leah and Rachel, and that Leah said, referring to her sister, ‘Her seeing, and me doing, satisfies.’

From Matelda and the Cloister of Hellfde Extracts from the Book of Matilda of Magdeburg by Matilda of Magdeburg

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

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

From Salon ● Apr. 10, 2022

Centrally, though, Chéri evolved a portrait of independent-minded women living in the shadow of slavery, but prefiguring a time when black women might have access to a world that recognized them as equals.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 6, 2020

Every act was preceded by “a dumb show,” prefiguring the incidents of the opening act; these scenical displays of something considered to be analogous to the matter were remains of the pageants.

From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Isaac Disraeli