foreguess

foreguess

English

Etymology

From Middle English foregessen, equivalent to fore- +‎ guess.

Verb

foreguess (third-person singular simple present foreguesses, present participle foreguessing, simple past and past participle foreguessed)

1. (transitive) To guess beforehand.
   • 1996, Angus Wells, Exile's Challenge:

     The rest—Rannach and Tekah, Yazte and Kahteney, Arcole—waited on him, on his response. He was, no matter his protestations, the Prophet, and they hesitated to foreguess him.

2. (transitive) To forecast.
3. (transitive) To anticipate; expect.
4. (transitive) To conjecture; assume.
   • 1886, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, The Last of the barons:

     " [...] He will be welcome there I foreguess; for every northman is either or Warwick or for Lancaster; and the two must unite now, I trow."

Derived terms

• foreguessing

Noun

foreguess (plural foreguesses)

1. A conjecture; an assumption.
   • 1887, The Scottish review:

     […] the idea – to put it in chemical language – that an allotropic form of gold may be discovered, so far from being an outcome of superstitious ignorance, was a foreguess of genius, which has led to brilliant and momentous discoveries, of which we are nearer to the cradle than to the maturity.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for foreguess in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)