future
/ˈfju.t͡ʃɚ/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.33 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The likely prospects for or fate of someone or something in time to come.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
Verb tense used to talk about events that will happen in the future; future tense.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "This solitary attitude stems in part from a deep sense of fatalism and futility, a profound social effect of the genophage that caused krogan numbers to dwindle to a relative handful. Not only are they angry that the entire galaxy seems out to get them, the krogan are also generally pessimistic about their race's chances of survival. The surviving krogan see no point to building for the future; there will be no future. The krogan live with an attitude of "kill, pillage, and be selfish, for tomorrow we die.""
- "There is no future in dwelling on the past."
- "Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food."
- "Again, it's unlikely they will return to traffic, but futures have been secured for four that will be heading to heritage railways [...]."
- "Future generations will either laugh or cry at our stupidity."
- "So this was my future home, I thought! Certainly it made a brave picture. I had seen similar ones fired-in on many a Heidelberg stein. Backed by towering hills,[…]a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams."
Etymology
From Middle English future, futur, from Old French futur, from Latin futūrus, irregular future active participle of sum (“to be”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become, be”). Cognate with Old English bēo (“to become, will be; to be”). More at be. Doublet of futur. Displaced native Old English tōweard, which took on a different meaning as toward, and Middle English afterhede (“future”, literally “afterhood”) in the given sense.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈfju.t͡ʃɚ/
- British English: /ˈfjuː.t͡ʃəː/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
forward
the future