What's the difference between figure and prefigure?

Figure


Definition:

  • (n.) The form of anything; shape; outline; appearance.
  • (n.) The representation of any form, as by drawing, painting, modeling, carving, embroidering, etc.; especially, a representation of the human body; as, a figure in bronze; a figure cut in marble.
  • (n.) A pattern in cloth, paper, or other manufactured article; a design wrought out in a fabric; as, the muslin was of a pretty figure.
  • (n.) A diagram or drawing; made to represent a magnitude or the relation of two or more magnitudes; a surface or space inclosed on all sides; -- called superficial when inclosed by lines, and solid when inclosed by surface; any arrangement made up of points, lines, angles, surfaces, etc.
  • (n.) The appearance or impression made by the conduct or carrer of a person; as, a sorry figure.
  • (n.) Distinguished appearance; magnificence; conspicuous representation; splendor; show.
  • (n.) A character or symbol representing a number; a numeral; a digit; as, 1, 2,3, etc.
  • (n.) Value, as expressed in numbers; price; as, the goods are estimated or sold at a low figure.
  • (n.) A person, thing, or action, conceived of as analogous to another person, thing, or action, of which it thus becomes a type or representative.
  • (n.) A mode of expressing abstract or immaterial ideas by words which suggest pictures or images from the physical world; pictorial language; a trope; hence, any deviation from the plainest form of statement.
  • (n.) The form of a syllogism with respect to the relative position of the middle term.
  • (n.) Any one of the several regular steps or movements made by a dancer.
  • (n.) A horoscope; the diagram of the aspects of the astrological houses.
  • (n.) Any short succession of notes, either as melody or as a group of chords, which produce a single complete and distinct impression.
  • (n.) A form of melody or accompaniment kept up through a strain or passage; a musical or motive; a florid embellishment.
  • (n.) To represent by a figure, as to form or mold; to make an image of, either palpable or ideal; also, to fashion into a determinate form; to shape.
  • (n.) To embellish with design; to adorn with figures.
  • (n.) To indicate by numerals; also, to compute.
  • (n.) To represent by a metaphor; to signify or symbolize.
  • (n.) To prefigure; to foreshow.
  • (n.) To write over or under the bass, as figures or other characters, in order to indicate the accompanying chords.
  • (n.) To embellish.
  • (v. t.) To make a figure; to be distinguished or conspicious; as, the envoy figured at court.
  • (v. t.) To calculate; to contrive; to scheme; as, he is figuring to secure the nomination.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Today’s figures tell us little about the timing of the first increase in interest rates, which will depend on bigger picture news on domestic growth, pay trends and perceived downside risks in the global economy,” he said.
  • (2) To this figure an additional 250,000 older workers must be added, who are no longer registered as unemployed but nevertheless would be interested in finding another job.
  • (3) The criticism over the downgrading of the leader of the Lords was led by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, a former Scotland secretary, who is a respected figure on the right.
  • (4) Brown's model, which goes far further than those from any other senior Labour figure, and the modest new income tax powers for Holyrood devised when he was prime minister, edge the party much closer to the quasi-federal plans championed by the Liberal Democrats.
  • (5) According to some reports as many as 30 people were killed in the explosion, although that figure could not be independently confirmed.
  • (6) As increases to the Isa allowance are based on the CPI inflation figure for the year to the previous September, the new data suggests the current Isa limit of £15,240 will remain unchanged next year.
  • (7) Shelter’s analysis of MoJ figures highlights high-risk hotspots across the country where families are particularly at risk of losing their homes, with households in Newham, east London, most exposed to the possibility of eviction or repossession, with one in every 36 homes threatened.
  • (8) Mitotic figures and leukotriene B4 levels in lesions decreased 86% and 64%, respectively, after seven days of cyclosporine therapy.
  • (9) Even if it were not the case that police use a variety of tricks to keep recorded crime figures low, this data would still represent an almost meaningless measure of the extent of crime in society, for the simple reason that a huge proportion of crimes (of almost all sorts) have always gone unreported.
  • (10) They urged the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make air quality a higher priority and release the latest figures on premature deaths.
  • (11) Which must make yesterday's jobs figures doubly alarming for the coalition.
  • (12) Of particular note is the difference between Black American and Nigerian figures.
  • (13) At autopsy, this DOCA-hypertensive rat was found to have a form of hepatitis associated with proliferative activity, i.e., cellular unrest, mitotic figures and oval cell hyperplasia.
  • (14) Okawa, who became the world's oldest person last June following the death at 116 of fellow Japanese Jiroemon Kimura , was given a cake with just three candles at her nursing home in Osaka – one for each figure in her age.
  • (15) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
  • (16) The figures, published in the company’s annual report , triggered immediate anger from fuel poverty campaigners who noted that energy suppliers had just been rapped over the knuckles by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for overcharging .
  • (17) Figures from 228 organisations, of which 154 are acute hospital trusts, show that 2,077 inpatient procedures have been cancelled due to the two-day strike alongside 3,187 day case operations and procedures.
  • (18) It seams rational to proceed to an earlier total correction in these cases when well defined criteria are fullfilled, as the mortality figures of the palliative and corrective procedures have a tendency to reach each other: (3,2 versus 5,7%).
  • (19) It is understood that Cooper rejected pressure from senior Labour figures last week for both her and Liz Kendall to drop out and leave the way clear for Burnham to contest Corbyn alone.
  • (20) Human figure drawings of 12 pediatric oncology patients were significantly smaller in height, width, and area than were drawings of 12 school children and 12 pediatric general surgery patients paired for sex and age.

Prefigure


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To show, suggest, or announce, by antecedent types and similitudes; to foreshadow.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We give also a short description of risks caused by chemical agents in agricolture (with hygienic implications concerning consumers also) prefiguring, in conclusion, some hypoteses for the substitution of the chemical mean with alternative techniques and methods.
  • (2) If so, the fall in private vehicles in London recently recorded in the census could soon prefigure a wider decline from "peak car" use.
  • (3) The trading room tickers and the panicked trilby-topped brokers commemorated in our wallchart today prefigured four years of ubiquitous hardship, enforced idleness and mass displacement.
  • (4) Although Hartley's understanding of the central nervous system has long been superseded, his general ideas prefigure some aspects of contemporary neurophysiology and philosophy of mind and thus provide a further reason for rescuing his vibrationism from oblivion.
  • (5) It is a more thoughtful book, but it also prefigures Clark's seeming obsession with the wayward lives of teenagers, which has since become the central theme of his films, most controversially Kids, and later books like 2008's Los Angeles Vol 1 , in which he trails a bunch of skater kids from Compton, east Los Angeles.
  • (6) The book's brutal last line – "Outside the owls hunted maternal rodents and their furry brood" – has been seen by some to prefigure war.
  • (7) No variants appearing to prefigure involution were identified either in term or in prolonged placentas.
  • (8) Spain's stance was prefigured in a secret document revealed by the Guardian this year, which showed that the previous Spanish government was planning to scupper the proposed ban.
  • (9) This prefigures a consideration of the nature of the concept of order in medical anthropology, science, and medicine.
  • (10) The onset of clinical immunodeficiency disease is prefigured by the replication of the FeLV-FAIDS variant virus in bone marrow and other tissues.
  • (11) The observations are novel in documenting the extent and precision to which a peripheral nerve pathway is prefigured by a contiguous assemblage of nonneuronal cells.
  • (12) Prefiguring attitudes now associated with John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman, Robinson succeeded in breaking through what he called the "sonorous drivel" of politicians, of whom he once said: "It's impossible to make the bastards reply to a straight question."
  • (13) The high rates of HIV infection in these communities (5 to 20 percent of adults aged 25 to 45) and their linkage to widespread drug use prefigure the development of endemic levels in several population subgroups, with substantial risk of heterosexual spread.
  • (14) Palin’s emergence at the junction of politics, celebrity and conservative populism prefigured the rise of Trump.
  • (15) The new pope embarks on a programme of reform, but Hadrian's one-year reign comes to an end when he is assassinated by a pope-hating Scot, prefiguring the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II .
  • (16) Prevention presently tends to be seen as a medical specialty among others and perhaps prefigures a new form of medicine, the object of which would be the societal body more than the body of the sick individual.
  • (17) 50's triggered, EU27 will engage to safeguard its interests October 2, 2016 May’s position was prefigured by remarks from the trade secretary, Liam Fox , who used a major speech to hail Britain’s transition to a fully independent member of the World Trade Organisation after it leaves the EU as a “golden opportunity” for the UK to trade with the rest of the world.
  • (18) Many of these early stories prefigured his later work, with lonely young soldiers, girls with "lovely, awkward" smiles, and children waiting for post that never comes.
  • (19) Morris offered his own site, Vote.com, as a prefiguration of an emerging online, participatory culture.
  • (20) The Chinese authorities' historical tendency to unleash, then rein in, such demonstrations of anti-Japanese sentiment is, fittingly, prefigured in Orwell's prose as well: after all, such hate "could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp" – and could even be directed toward China's politburo itself.