forerunner

Instead, a captain visited from Bletchley Park, the then-secret headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School, the forerunner of GCHQ, and the base for Allied codebreaking.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026

Leibowitz, who died May 6 at age 89, was a forerunner of the so-called quants, math whizzes who would become major factors in financial markets two decades later.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

And in a section about advances in structural engineering, the museum presents one of its signature possessions—the 1878, 9-foot-high forerunner model of the Statue of Liberty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 2026

The WTO's forerunner was responsible for negotiating the global agreements that reduced tariffs on trade in goods that helped bring about post-WWII prosperity.

From Barron's ● May 6, 2026

In essence, the OSS was the nation’s spy program—the forerunner of the CIA.

From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield

Margaret and Alice are the forerunners of Lucy and Ethel, and Shakespeare’s comedy, written expressly to entertain, gives us a sense of what an Elizabethan-era situation comedy might look like.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

His 18th-century forerunners, the London macaroni and the Paris incroyable, had one foot in the court and the other in the city street, but the dandy, posh or not, lived in a middle-class, democratic society.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 15, 2026

Having Albert Brooks as a best friend likely molded his style too; both were forerunners of a school of comedy that merged a naturalistic, conversational delivery with an absurdist sensibility.

From Salon ● Dec. 21, 2025

The first run was delayed for 12 minutes after one of the forerunners, who test the course before the first racer starts, crashed and needed medical attention for an apparent right arm injury.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 28, 2023

The church modes, like their Greek forerunners, were ascribed certain moods, and a great deal of theoretical energy was expended over hundreds of years describing their effect and their best possible application.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall