Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of prefiguring; antecedent representation; presage; prognostication.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of prefiguring; prefiguration; also, that which is prefigured.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of prefiguring; prefiguration.
  • noun That which is prefigured.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

prefigure +‎ -ment

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word prefigurement.

Examples

  • Early church fathers taught that the 6 foot tall Temple candle was a kind of prefigurement for Christ.

    Reparation elena maria vidal 2009

  • It is the final loss to the geometrician, this believer in natural order as a prefigurement of the supernatural.

    The Priestly Comedy of J. F. Powers Gordon, Mary 1982

  • Meta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he might still wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuous youth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses.

    Mountain Blood A Novel Joseph Hergesheimer 1917

  • Lettice, with her unborn child, her youth haggard with apprehension and pain, the prefigurement of the agony of birth, gazed, dumb and bitter in her sacrifice, at the graceful, cold figure that, as irrevocably as herself, denied all that

    Mountain Blood A Novel Joseph Hergesheimer 1917

  • It was not the mere reflection of her body, but a prefigurement of her buoyant spirit, that had escaped from her control and tauntingly eluded capture.

    Otherwise Phyllis Meredith Nicholson 1906

  • For the consummation of any process of growth is always the perfection, the final well-being, of the thing that grows; and therefore in each successive stage of the process there is a truer prefigurement of the perfection which is being gradually achieved, and a fuller sense of that well-being which, at its highest level, is perfection's other self.

    What Is and What Might Be A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular Edmond Holmes 1893

  • To this day He is in the midst of them; and the strange behaviour of the two between whom He hung that day was a prefigurement of what has been happening every day since: some sinners have believed on Him and been saved, while others have believed not: to the one His gospel is a savour of life unto life, to the other it is a savour of death unto death.

    The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion James Stalker 1887

  • If the prefigurement was at any point vague it was none the less arresting.

    Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi George Washington Cable 1884

  • Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so plain a man's emotions.

    The Tragic Muse Henry James 1879

  • It was not quite easy to see why this had been the case -- it had not been precisely Peter's own prefigurement.

    The Tragic Muse Henry James 1879

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.