prefigure

present singular third person prefigures · participle present prefiguring · participle past prefigured · past prefigured

1. often in a Biblical contextTo show or suggest ahead of time; to represent beforehand.

   Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai, all prefigure NRx urban futures.

   2018 September 29, Roger Burrows, “On Neoreaction”, in The Sociological Review Magazine

2. To predict or foresee.

plural prefigures

1. That which prefigures or appears to predict; a harbinger.

   In his influential commentary (the Moralia) Gregory the Great interpreted the protagonist typologically as a prefigure of Christ and of the Church persecuted.

   2012, C. S. Shapley, Studies in French Poetry of the Fifteenth Century, page 5

   1 more example

   Quite different is the way in which the tomboy girled the rebel narrative. In recent years, queer theorists have taken a deep interest in the tomboy as a prefigure for the butch dyke.

   2005, Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity, page 293