Forerunner

[f. prec. + -ER¹.]

  1.  One who runs before, esp. one sent to prepare the way and herald a great man’s approach, a harbinger; also, a guide. Chiefly transf. and fig.

  First used fig. as rendering of L. præcursor, esp. of John the Baptist as ‘the Forerunner of Christ.’

a. 1300.  Cursor M., 13208 (Cott.).

c. 1440.  York Myst., xxi. 16.

1541.  Coverdale, Old Faith, ix. (1547), F viij. John the baptist, whych was the fore runner of our Lord Christ.

1576.  A. Fleming, A Panoplie of Epistles, 292. Followyng y^e infallible footsteps of thy forerunner Nature.

1634.  Heywood, Witches Lanc., I. i. Wks. 1874, IV. 175.

a. 1711.  Ken, Preparatives, Poet. Wks. 1721, IV. 144.

1725.  Pope, Odyss., I. 519.

1860.  Pusey, The Minor Prophets, 594. The last prophet of the Old Testament, like the Forerunner of our Lord, whom he foreannounced under his own name, ‘a the messenger of the Lord,’ willed to be but ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness.’

1878.  Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 75. When Claudius, the legate of the consuls and forerunner of the Roman army, appeared at Rhegium.

  b.  Applied transf. to things.

1579.  E. K., Gloss. Spenser’s Sheph. Cal., March, 11. The swallow, which bird useth to be counted the messenger, and as it were, the forerunner, of springe.

1622.  Sparrow, Bk. Com. Prayer (1661), 115. These [Advent Sundaies] are to Christmas Day, as S. John Baptist to Christ, forerunners to prepare for it, and point it out.

1674.  N. Fairfax, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, Contents, Chap. I. The Introduction or foreruner.

1751.  Chesterf., Lett. (1792), III. ccxlii. 108–9. Lord Albemarle has wrote a sort of panegyric of you, which has been seen by many people here, and which will be a very useful forerunner for you.

  c.  pl. The advance-guard of an army. Chiefly transf. and fig.

1535.  Coverdale, Wisd. xii. 8. Thou sparedest them also (as men), & sendest y^e forerunners of thyne hoost, euen hornettes to destroye them out by lytle & litle.

1645.  Pagitt, Heresiogr. (1661), 276. They … cryed out, that they were the fore-runners of Popery.

1878.  Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 233. Four thousand cavalry, who had been sent forward by Servilius as his forerunners to co-operate with Flaminius, fell also into Hannibal’s hands.

  2.  One whom another follows or comes after, a predecessor; also, an ancestor.

1595.  Shaks., John, II. i. 2. Arthur, that great fore-runner of thy bloud.

1683.  D. A., Art Converse, 7. Long descriptions of their own Pedigree, and grandure of their fore-runners.

1768.  Sterne, Sent. Journ. (1775), I. 13. Both my travels and observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of my forerunners, that I might have insisted upon a whole nitch entirely to myself.

1866.  J. Martineau, Ess., I. 15. Remounting by the steps of a noble filiation, Comte claims Hume as his chief forerunner in philosophy, with Kant as an accessory, whose fundamental conception waited for true development in Positivism.

  transf.  1663.  Gerbier, Counsel, A iv a. The fore-runner of this Discourse was printed and dedicated to the King & to the Parliament, the Chief Builders of a State.

  3.  That which foreruns or foreshadows something else; a prognostic or sign of something to follow.

1589.  Greene, Menaphon (Arb.), 39. My distressed haps are the resolutions of the Destinies, and the wrongs of my youth, are the forerunners of my woes in age.

1612.  Woodall, The Surgeons Mate, Wks. (1653), 88. A convulsion is a dangerous disease of the brain, which often-times is a fore-runner or a messenger of death.

1764.  Harmer, Observ., xvii. 42. A squall of wind and clouds of dust are the usual forerunners of these first rains.

1878.  Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 112. The vast increase of population was already threatening the city with the famine and the pestilence which are usually the last outcome and not the forerunners of a siege.

  4.  Naut. a. A rope fastened to a harpoon. Cf. FORE-GANGER. b. A rope rove through a single block on the foremast. c. (See quots.)

  a.  1694.  Acc. Sev. Late Voy., II. (1711), 158. The first of them is ty’d to the Fore-runner, or small Line; as the Whale runs under the Water, they tye more and more Line to it.

  b.  1805.  in Nicolas, Disp. Nelson (1846), VII. 189, note. Got fore-runners and tackles forward to secure foremast.

  c.  1815.  Falconer’s Dict. Marine (ed. Burney), Fore-Runner of the Log-line, a small piece of red buntin, laid into that line at a certain distance from the log.

1841.  R. H. Dana, Seaman’s Man., 106. Fore-runner. A piece of rag, terminating the stray-line of the log-line.

  Hence Forerunnership, the condition or dignity of a forerunner.

1881.  A. B. Bruce, Chief End Revelat., vi. 300. This forerunnership of Christ is the originality of Christianity as compared with the Levitical religion, and it is its glory.