Also 6 Sc. corruptly foreta(i)king. [OE. foretáen (= OHG. forazeichan), f. FORE- pref. + táen, TOKEN.] A premonitory token; a prognostic.
c. 888. K. Ælfred, Boeth., xl. § 2. Hit sie foretacn ecra gooda.
c. 1175. Lamb. Hom., 87. And wes iseȝen godes fortacne uppon ane dune þat is þe mont of synai.
c. 1250. Gen. & Ex., 2993.
| Ðis | |
| fortoken godes gastes is. |
a. 1300. E. E. Psalter, lxxvii. 43.
| Als he set in Egipt his taknes mani an, | |
| And his for-taknes in felde of Than. |
1393. Gower, Conf., I. 137.
| To loke if he him wolde amende, | |
| To him a foretokne [MS. aforetokne] he sende. |
1562. Winȝet, Cert. Tractates, iii. Wks. 1888, I. 24. Ane gret portent and foretaiking of ignorance.
1580. Ord. of Prayer, in Liturg. Serv. Q. Eliz. (1847), 571. We find not that any such foretoken happened against the coming of this Earthquake.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 523. There are in Swine many presages and foretokens of foule weather.
1713. R. Nelson, Life Bp. Bull, lv. 304–5. Did appear to Holy Men of old, as a Fore-token of his future Incarnation.
1834. Good, Study Med. (ed. 4), III. 340. The foretoken has always been found to be true.
1858. Torrey, Neander’s Ch. Hist., IX. II. 568. The opposition is strongly marked between the theistic Friends of God of whom we have thus far been speaking, and the pantheistic class. While in the former we may see foretokens of a direction which led to the Reformation; in the latter we see, no less clearly, the foretokens of a thoroughly antichristian tendency, hostile to everything supernatural, every intimation of a God above the world; a tendency which contained, first in the form of mysticism, the germ of absolute Rationalism and the deification of reason—a tendency which, after many attempts, often repelled and continually renewed, was eventually to appear in a contest for life and death with Christianity itself.
