forerunner.
A runner at the front or ahead.
Meaning & usage
A runner at the front or ahead.
By extension, a non-competitor who leads out the competitors on to the circuit, or who runs/rides the course prior to competitor trials, usually testing or checking the way.
A precursor or harbinger, a warning ahead.
A forebear, an ancestor, a predecessor.
Bakelite is a forerunner of today's plastics.
A postage stamp used in the time before a region or area issues stamps of its own.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English forrenner, foreriner. Calque of Latin praecursor (“one who runs before, a forerunner”). Equivalent to fore- + runner and/or forerun + -er.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.