Forelife

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A former or previous life

    "[...] Murasaki, who stood before me and with an expression of perfect joy said to me, 'Buddha and Heaven have taken pity on me; for the life on earth, life in Senland is vouchsafed me, a home in Horai is accorded me; in the forelife of the Princess, in the forelife of my lord, Yamabito, was the bond created that presaged their eternal wedlock, when they shall shake them [...]"

  2. 2
    Early or primitive life; protozoa rare

    "Because all they hoped to create was the lowest kind of life; in their own words, the protozoon, or forelife; whereas Babbage created the highest kind of life; as it should seem, the afterlife, [...]"

Example

More examples

"[...] Murasaki, who stood before me and with an expression of perfect joy said to me, 'Buddha and Heaven have taken pity on me; for the life on earth, life in Senland is vouchsafed me, a home in Horai is accorded me; in the forelife of the Princess, in the forelife of my lord, Yamabito, was the bond created that presaged their eternal wedlock, when they shall shake them [...]"

Etymology

From Middle English forelyf, foorlyf, equivalent to fore- + life.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.