foredawn

English

Etymology

fore- +‎ dawn

Noun

foredawn (plural foredawns)

1. The time just before dawn.
   • 1984, The Granta - Issues 12-13, page 231:

     I opened the front door and went out into the foredawn, into the hissing of the silence and the humming of the underground trains standing empty with lighted windows on the far side of the common.

   • 2003, Tyler Stovall, Georges Van Den Abbeele, French Civilization and Its Discontents, page 164:

     Condé innovates, or at least transforms, this structure to generate a response uttered in the speech of the Caribbean night: from dusk to foredawn (the deceased being evoked only at night?) in opposition to Faulkner's story “On the Road” (entirely typical of the American imaginary), the "story of a long funerary voyage" to pick up Carson McCullers's expression cited by Michel Gresset in his preface to the bilingual Folio edition of As I Lay Dying.

   • 2014, Elizabeth Haydon, The Merchant Emperor: The Symphony of Ages:

     So when Gerald Owen heard the voice in the dark of foredawn, he had no idea that its instructions would come to naught.

   • 2017, Fernando Pessoa, Poemas de Álvaro de Campos:

     Full, as they are, of murmurous silences in the foredawns And budding with the dawns in a noise of cranes

Verb

foredawn (third-person singular simple present foredawns, present participle foredawning, simple past and past participle foredawned)

1. To anticipate dawning or emerging.
   • 1928, George Tobias Flom, Albert Morey Studtevant, Scandinavian Studies and Notes - Volumes 10-12, page 109:

     I see in it a wonderful fulfillment of things and plans which have been foredawned in my mind, many years ago;

   • 1986, Ernst Bloch, The principle of hope - Volume 3, page 981:

     The desiderium is the most certain Being and the only honourable quality of all men; the desiderium to give shape to that which foredawns so clearly, which questions in objects themselves and seeks its poet, with an as it were demanding gaze, is Having and Not-Having itself.