Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Forebode   Listen
verb
Forebode  v. t.  (past & past part. foreboded; pres. part. foreboding)  
1.
To foretell.
2.
To be prescient of (some ill or misfortune); to have an inward conviction of, as of a calamity which is about to happen; to augur despondingly. "His heart forebodes a mystery." "Sullen, desponding, and foreboding nothing but wars and desolation, as the certain consequence of Caesar's death." "I have a sort of foreboding about him."
Synonyms: To foretell; predict; prognosticate; augur; presage; portend; betoken.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Forebode" Quotes from Famous Books



... on the door the furniture might be placed across to make what in the wars is called a barricado, but the wiser thought came at once that this was too easily done, and that if the danger that the dim room seemed gloomily to forebode were to come from a door so readily barricadoed, then those must have been simple gallants who parted so easily with the rings that adorned Morano's two little fingers. No, it was something more subtle than any attack through that door ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... where the Argive men were thronged. As rushed their troop up silver paths of sea, The flood disported round them as they came. With one wild cry they floated up; it rang, A sound as when fleet-flying cranes forebode A great storm. Moaned the monsters of the deep Plaintively round that train of mourners. Fast On sped they to their goal, with awesome cry Wailing the while their sister's mighty son. Swiftly from Helicon the Muses came Heart-burdened ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... and exhibiting such goule-like propensities. The Swedes, however, regard it as sacred, and no one offers to molest it. In the north of England, one Magpie flying alone, is deemed an ill omen; two together, a fortunate one; three forebode a funeral, and four a wedding; or, when on a journey, to meet two magpies portends a wedding; three, a successful journey; four, unexpected good news; and five, that the person will soon be in company with the great. To kill a magpie, indicates or brings down some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... them.—Alass! I fear this is not the Case— Already Disputes have arisen, which they have referrd to Congress! And though they appear to treat each other with a Politeness becoming their Rank, in my Mind, Altercations between Commanders who have Pretensions so nearly equal, I mean in Point of COMMAND, forebode a Repetition of Misfortunes—I sincerely wish my Apprehensions may prove to ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and to defy a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvas of Vandyke? Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest when ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... whose account I had aforetime so much splendour and renown, my only son for whom I loosed my virgin zone first and last. For to me beyond others the goddess Eileithyia grudged abundant offspring. Alas for my folly! Not once, not even in nay dreams did I forebode this, that the flight of Phrixus would ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... a kind old man with a white stubby beard and greasy waistcoat, took him on his knee and showed him a beautiful, many-colored picture-book, he felt calmer; only the many strange faces that stared at him from the benches seemed to forebode no ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... care, But Cato, whom you quoted, you may spare: 'Tis true, a wise and worthy man he seems, And (as you say) gave no belief to dreams: But other men of more authority, And, by the immortal powers! as wise as he, 200 Maintain, with sounder sense, that dreams forebode; For Homer plainly says they come from God. Nor Cato said it: but some modern fool Imposed in Cato's name on boys at school. Believe me, madam, morning dreams foreshow The events of things, and future weal or woe: Some ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... say, don't you think this dream, coming uncalled for uninduced, must forebode some ill? Rely upon it, something connected with that wretched murder is going ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Shakespeare, giving utterance to a superstition then common. From these words it would seem that the raven was considered a sign of evil augury to a person whose house was about to be entered by a visitor, for his croaking forebode treachery. But the raven's croaking was thought to foretell misfortune to a person about to enter another's house. If he heard the croaking he had better turn back, for an evil ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... is called 'the advancement of civilization'. But Slimak knew nothing of civilization and its boons, and therefore looked upon this outcome of it as ominous. The encroaching line seemed to him like the tongue of some vast reptile, and the mounds of earth to forebode four graves, his own and those of his ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights over labors, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of affection: began to forebode a time when he would escape from his home-nest; and, at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only sigh and shake her head. Before those fatal decrees in life are executed, there are always secret previsions and warning omens. When everything yet seems calm, we are aware that the storm ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... naked eye. But, before this investigation, Linnaeus and other naturalists had shown that red infusoria were capable of giving that colour to water which, in early times, and still, we fear, in remote districts, was supposed to forebode great calamities. In the year 1815 an instance of this superstitious dread occurred in the south of Prussia. A number of red, violet, or grass-green spots were observed in a lake near Lubotin, about the end of harvest. In winter the ice was coloured in the same manner at the surface, while ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... upon them like a flood. The ring, so unaccountably brought back by the Red Woman, was beyond doubt the cause of all their misfortunes—its reappearance, as she anticipated, being the harbinger of misery. What should be the next arrow from her quiver she trembled to forebode. But in the midst of this fever of doubt and apprehension one hope sustained her, and that was the result of her husband's mission to Dr Dee, who would doubtless find out the nature of the spell, and relieve ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... horse would come: And, if I well forebode, My hat and wig will soon be here, They are ...
— R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs • Various

... met, and the German counterthrust toward Warsaw had come to a standstill in the mud of Poland and before the stone-wall defensive of the Russians on the Bsura and the Rawka. Attacks launched by the Russians against the East Prussian frontier, centering at Lyck, in January, 1915, seemed to forebode a fresh Russian offensive intended to sweep back the German armies in this section whose position on the Russian right wing was a continual threat to the communications of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... of Innate Fire, is to guide Mankind to as much Fore-sight of things, as either by Nature, or by the Aid of any thing Extranatural, may be obtain'd; and by this exceeding Knowledge, a Man shall forebode to himself approaching Evil or Good, so as to avoid this, or be in the way of that; and what if I should say, That the Notices of these things are not only frequent, but constant, and require nothing of us, but to make use of this Elevator, to keep our Eyes, our Ears, and our Fancies open to the ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... beautiful god, the son of the great god Odin, and himself the wisest, mildest, best beloved of all the immortals. The story of his death, as it is told in the younger or prose Edda, runs thus. Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... newspapers meant by the Balance of Power in Europe, nor perhaps could any one of them have explained why, when Austria declared war on Servia, Germany should be taking a hand. But they had learnt enough on the lower deck to forebode that, when Germany took a hand, the British Navy would pretty soon be clearing for action. Consequently all through the last week of July, when the word "Germany" began to be printed in large type in Press headlines, the drifters putting out ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... full share,— Should have power to approach us! Suppose To us drifting and dreaming afloat On this shadowless shining of waters, This mirror of tide without stain, It were possible just for one hour To forebode, or remember, or fear, Nothing; of one thing aware And one only, that we two are here, And together, unhindered: then, Dear, This one hour were our life,—all the past But the ignorant sleep before birth, All the future a trance, that ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... neither rest nor sleep. Down in the Au-mann's haunt it sounds and rings, so that the tones sometimes pierce upward through the waters; and many people maintain that its strains forebode the death of some one; but that is not true, for the Bell is only talking with the Au-mann, who ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... woe is me! my father lose, lightener of every care, Of every ill: me all alone, me weary, father dear, 710 There wouldst thou leave; thou borne away from perils all for nought! Ah, neither Helenus the seer, despite the fears he taught, Nor grim Celaeno in her wrath, this grief of soul forebode. This was the latest of my toils, the goal of all my road, For me departed thence some God to this your ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... above it, over a chill, clear, saffron sky, were reefs of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode an early winter; but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky. It was better to wait in the darkness ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to her entreaties, in spite of the secret misgivings of my own mind, which seemed to forebode the unhappy catastrophe that afterwards befell me. I went out with the intention of asking two or three guardsmen, with whom Lescaut had made me acquainted, to undertake the arrest of G—— M——. I found only one of them at home, but he was a fellow ripe for any adventure; and he no sooner heard ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... Westerner to realize how much of the life of the Hindu, in the home and in society, is circumscribed by superstitions and directed by omens only. In the case of a man setting out upon a journey forty-three different things may happen which prognosticate good, and thirty-four which forebode evil. In household matters, the eye of the Hindu man, and very specially of the Hindu woman, is ever open to any one of a thousand indications that may reveal the will of the god or the demon as ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... and men of affairs better suited my changed condition of life. The times were sober, and for those who could see, a black cloud was on each horizon. 'Twas only a matter of months when the thunder-clap was to come-indeed, enough was going on within our own province to forebode a revolution. The Assembly to which many of these gentlemen belonged was in a righteous state of opposition to the Proprietary and the Council concerning the emoluments of colonial officers and of clergymen. Honest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... companied with many men, but never saw we a pleasanter or more courteous than thou: and now we must part from thee. Yet it rests with thee to see us again, and if thou hearken to us, we need never be parted: but our hearts forebode us that thou will not hearken to us; and this is the cause of our weeping" "Tell me how the case stands," said I; and they answered, "Know that we are the daughters of kings, who have lived here together for years past, and once in every year ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... death comes, they are sure of the ghostly warning. Benson saw it before my father died, and old Roger, the night my uncle was seized with apoplexy. Patty will never be made to believe that this warning does not forebode the death of Maurice or myself, for the gallant spirit leaves the ladies of our house to depart in peace. How does it strike ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... politics transformed. The Whig party, crushed to earth in 1852, made no move to take a stand on the new issue; it was dead. His own historical Democratic party was everywhere throughout the North in a turmoil that seemed to forebode dissolution. One new party, sprung swiftly and secretly into life on the old issue of enmity to foreigners and Roman Catholics, seemed to stand for the idea that the best way to meet the slavery issue was to run away from it. Another new party, conceived in the spirit of ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... on close, damp days, the continuous indigestion which had afflicted his delicate stomach, and the latent hostility which was gathering strength against him. All these things he now accepted as chastisement. That dull rumbling of hostility and spite, the cause of which he could not divine, must forebode some coming catastrophe before whose approach he already stooped, with the shame of one who knows there is a transgression that he must expiate. Then he felt furious with himself as he thought of the popular rising he was preparing; and reflected that he was no longer unsullied enough ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... her towers in purple; Light of heart were king and fool; Fair forebode the merrymaking Of the seven ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... eyes, his lineaments entire: It was himself. He walked beside the high-priest: But soon they caused him to avoid my sight. This is the trouble that arrests me here, And touching which I long to question both. Mathan, what does this prodigy forebode? ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley

... be as dumb as an oyster, and do yer biddin' in a jiffy," said Pat, backing out of the room, and glad to escape from one whose threatening aspect seemed to forebode evil to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... he was amply endowed with the most needful quality of an advocate,—to be always strongly and wholly of his present way of thinking, whatever it might be. Next we have, in 1660, "Astraea Redux" on the "happy restoration" of Charles II. In this also we can forebode little of the full-grown Dryden but his defects. We see his tendency to exaggeration, and to confound physical with metaphysical, as where he says of the ships that brought home the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... destruction of Kshatriyas in battle. Things endued with light are all pale; beasts and birds look fierce; and there are to be witnessed many terrific portents indicative of the destruction of Kshatriyas. And these omens forebode great havoc among ourselves. O king, thy ranks seem to be confounded by these blazing meteors, and thy animals look dispirited and seem to be weeping. Vultures and kites are wheeling all around thy troops. Thou shalt have to repent upon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli



Words linked to "Forebode" :   augur, promise, bet, forecast, wager, read, call, prophesy, calculate, foretell, hazard, vaticinate, prognosticate



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com