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

It tempers its poppy lushness with starker, harder music, although the burbling synth that runs throughout seems to prefigure New Order’s later direction.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 17, 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

Those dark angels, the moving men, how heartless they seem in their brisk and resolute dispassion—yet how exactly they prefigure the implacable sternness of the ultimate shepherds.

From Pipefuls by Christopher Morley

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

Cobb’s unexpected new career prefigured those of the charismatic and authoritative doctor-authors and healthcare influencers guiding women through menopause online today.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 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

Social fusion of the mother country and the Colonies prefigured by the presence and influence on both sides of the Atlantic of the American element in the best society in London.

From Social Transformations of the Victorian Age A Survey of Court and Country by T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet) Escott

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

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

Buckingham Palace saw her as a “threat of some kind,” Diana said, prefiguring the language that her daughter-in-law used with Ms. Winfrey in March.

From New York Times ● May 20, 2021

The third part was Das Opfermahl—the offering of bread and wine by Melchisedek to Abraham, prefiguring the Last Supper.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876 by Various