forerunner

Among the proclamations of the first French republic was an end to slavery in its island possessions—a forerunner of wider abolition.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 27, 2026

And in a section about advances in structural engineering, the museum presents one of its signature possessions—the 1878, 9-foot-high forerunner model of the Statue of Liberty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 2026

Two years later, though, Jospin won a revenge of sorts when the cocky Chirac called an early general election, expecting his right-wing RPR party -- forerunner of Nicolas Sarkozy's Republicans -- to win easily.

From Barron's ● Mar. 23, 2026

The Actor Awards ignored Erivo altogether, also skipping “Wicked: For Good” for the cast award that its forerunner was nominated for last year.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026

More nuanced and more revealing is Wills’s other remark—that “Everett’s classicism was as much the forerunner of Lincoln’s talk as its foil or contrast.”

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith

Margaret and Alice are the forerunners of Lucy and Ethel, and Shakespeare’s comedy, written expressly to entertain, gives us a sense of what an Elizabethan-era situation comedy might look like.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

His 18th-century forerunners, the London macaroni and the Paris incroyable, had one foot in the court and the other in the city street, but the dandy, posh or not, lived in a middle-class, democratic society.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 15, 2026

For our fruit-loving forerunners a few million years before we figured out cooking, a little squish was an easy cue that our food was ready to eat.

From Salon ● Feb. 10, 2024

The first run was delayed for 12 minutes after one of the forerunners, who test the course before the first racer starts, crashed and needed medical attention for an apparent right arm injury.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 28, 2023

The church modes, like their Greek forerunners, were ascribed certain moods, and a great deal of theoretical energy was expended over hundreds of years describing their effect and their best possible application.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall