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OneKitly

foresee

verbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//fɔːˈsiː//
  • United Kingdom//fəˈsiː//
  • United States//fɔɹˈsi//
  • United States//fɚˈsi//

To perceive (a situation or event) in advance.

verb

  1. 1

    To perceive (a situation or event) in advance.

    A prudent man foreſeeth the euill, and hideth himſelfe: but the ſimple paſſe on, and are puniſhed.

    Ariel. My Maſter through his Art foreſees the danger That you (his friend) are in, and ſends me forth (For elſe his proiect dies) to keepe them liuing.

    "I foresee in this," he says, "the breaking up of our profession."

    One might imagine that the directors foresaw the somewhat uninspiring appearance of the future Manchester stations, and decided to start as it was intended to go on.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo provide.

    Great shoals of people, which go on to populate, without foreseeing means of life.

Etymology

From Middle English foreseen, forseen, from Old English foresēon; equivalent to fore- + see. Similar formations in Dutch voorzien, German vorsehen, Latin prōvideō, (whence provide and purvey), Ancient Greek πρόοιδα (próoida), Polish przewidzieć, Russian провидеть (providetʹ).

Forms

past tense
foresaw
past participle
foreseen
present participle
foreseeing
third person singular
foresees
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).