forerunner

Together they launched a website in 2013 that would become the forerunner to the present book.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 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

She made the leap to the small screen in the 1950s on Children's Television Club, a forerunner of Blue Peter.

From BBC ● May 22, 2026

Two years later, though, Jospin won a revenge of sorts when the cocky Chirac called an early general election, expecting his right-wing RPR party -- forerunner of Nicolas Sarkozy's Republicans -- to win easily.

From Barron's ● Mar. 23, 2026

This was the forerunner of the Royal Society, and it was through Katherine that Robert began to make the acquaintance of these men on his visits to London.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

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

Wollstonecraft was an advocate of women’s rights and is considered one of the forerunners of feminism.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 19, 2023

In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.

From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling