How to Use prefigure in a Sentence

prefigure

verb
  • His style of painting prefigured the development of modern art.
  • Tim, more than any of their records, prefigured the 1990s rock boom that made these guys posthumous legends.
    Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Eva’s name, the Latinate of Eve, prefigures her role in the post-apocalyptic world.
    Maria Garcia, latimes.com, 25 June 2019
  • Aggressively pretty clothes were worn in a fume flecked background that prefigured the gilet jaunes Parisian chaos of the last few months.
    Vogue, 28 Dec. 2018
  • And that domination prefigured his takeover of the G.O.P. and the Party’s abasement of itself before him.
    Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2020
  • Netroots activists pushed the Democrats to the left, helped the party retake Congress in 2006, and prefigured Obama’s use of social media.
    Jeet Heer, New Republic, 11 May 2017
  • The North saga prefigured many things, large and small, about conservative politics in the present moment.
    Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 7 May 2018
  • But this project, written by and about women, prefigures a lot of the calls for representation that have emerged from the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
    Alex Bhattacharji, WSJ, 21 May 2018
  • Not long ago, Hong Kong was seen as the city that would prefigure a more liberal, prosperous future for China.
    Washington Post, 3 July 2020
  • In many ways, the series prefigured what 2016’s Rogue One was trying to accomplish: tell a standalone story in the larger Star Wars universe, apart from the main saga story.
    Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 5 Oct. 2018
  • In so many ways Davis prefigured today's workaholic NFL exec.
    Jon Wertheim, SI.com, 27 Aug. 2019
  • The effort to install Yanukovych prefigured many elements of Trump’s campaign.
    Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 8 July 2018
  • The matters to which Hayes referred were, even if not fully predictable, certainly prefigured.
    Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, 8 Jan. 2020
  • Such episodes prefigured a broader turn in the case for exacting drug regulation.
    Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 19 June 2023
  • As in life, guns prefigure and alter things, often irreparably.
    Jeffrey Ann Goudie, BostonGlobe.com, 18 Mar. 2021
  • Through the language of the missal as well as through the posture and gestures of the priest at the altar, the traditional Latin Mass recalls Temple sacrifice, a type that prefigured the blood sacrifice on Calvary.
    Nicholas Frankovich, National Review, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Magnetic wheels mean that the surface can be a floor, wall, or ceiling, prefiguring a future where these contraptions might crawl on the walls of theme park attractions.
    Joseph Flaherty, WIRED, 9 May 2014
  • The weakness of their victory is related to the second, more general reason to watch the SBC: Big church splits can prefigure big national splits.
    Bonnie Kristian, The Week, 16 June 2021
  • Jesus’ swaddling clothes prefigure his freeing us from death’s winding sheets.
    Alexandra Mullen, WSJ, 23 Dec. 2020
  • But so far state media and official spokesmen have avoided the slogans that often prefigure outbreaks of public rage—the charge, say, that a foreign power has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.
    The Economist, 23 June 2018
  • The company’s latest financial results seem to prefigure this bleak prospect.
    George Calhoun, Forbes, 1 June 2022
  • These opening titles really seem to prefigure the Harry Potter movies.
    Emma Specter, Vogue, 19 Oct. 2021
  • China didn’t simply swoop in and make the disputing parties suddenly get along; the progress made in Beijing hardly prefigures a major shift in the regional dynamic — at least, not yet.
    Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 12 Mar. 2023
  • This was true even with the panels that prefigured electronic screens, including shoji, as well as mirrors and newspaper broadsheets.
    Susan Crawford, WIRED, 27 Mar. 2018
  • But even as the spare language of her lines endows them with a monumental feel, their brevity and levity also prefigure the semiotically fraught short exchanges of the texting era.
    Washington Post, 20 Nov. 2021
  • Grandpop, whose memory is fading with old age, recalls bits of his combat experience, which prefigures what happens to his son and grandson.
    Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 6 Feb. 2018
  • That the doll seemed to prefigure Madonna’s nearly identical look on tour shortly after only confirmed Mackie’s uncanny feel for the zeitgeist.
    Evan Nicole Brown, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 July 2023
  • Limbaugh’s success prefigured more than the rise of conservative radio.
    Matthew Continetti, National Review, 8 Feb. 2020
  • His two-decade rule has transformed the face of his country and cemented a political style that prefigured the rise of numerous nationalist demagogues elsewhere.
    Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 10 May 2023
  • Its remaining original construction — in the vernacular idiom, with touches that prefigure the Baroque, and an Orientalist flared red ceramic tile roof — dates to the late 1500s.
    New York Times, 24 Sep. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'prefigure.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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