sb. and adv. [f. FORE- pref. + TIME sb.] Former time; a former time. † a. In advb. phrase, In foretime(s = AFORETIME(S.
c. 1540. trans. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camden), I. 98. If there were in foretimes enie hatred on their partes towards the Romanies, it was now cleane abolished.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 507. It was called in foretime (if I be not deceived) Norton Dany.
b. The time gone by, the past; also, the early days (of a city or state).
1853. Grote, Greece, II. lxxxvii. XI. 380. That conception of Athens in her foretime which he [Thucydides] is perpetually impressing on his countrymen.
1868. Gladstone, Juv. Mundi (1869), v. 124. The immense fame aquired, and the mythical character assumed, by the single great Achaian voyage of the traditionary fore-time, that of the ship Argo to the Euxine, combine with all the other negative evidence of the Poems to prove to us how completely the Greeks of the Homeric age were dependent on the Phœnicians for their ordinary intercourse with the outer world.
c. attrib. (quasi-adj.)
1894. F. S. Ellis, Reynard, 116.
| For he who thought the world to win, | |
| His foretime poverty was in. |
1896. C. Harrison, in Daily News, 8 Jan., 6/3.
| For though You now have passed away from us | |
| The foretime Dedication still holds good; | |
| Nay—gains a new authority: and thus, | |
| In unseen ways more felt than understood. |
† B. adv. = AFORETIME. Obs.–1
c. 1590. Greene, Fr. Bacon, ix. 128. Lest thou dost lose what foretime thou didst gain.
