foreknown

Foreknown is an adjective that means known in advance or known beforehand. It is formed from the prefix fore- meaning before and the past participle of know, and it is most often used in formal, literary, or specialized contexts to indicate that knowledge of something existed prior to a specified time or event. In everyday English, terms like foreseen or foreknowledge are more common, but foreknown appears in religious, philosophical, or historical writing.

In religious contexts, foreknown frequently appears in discussions of divine knowledge, where events, people, or outcomes are said to be foreknown by a deity. This usage is closely tied to concepts such as predestination and election in theology, where certain persons or events are described as foreknown rather than contingent. In secular or historical writing, foreknown can describe information or constraints that were understood ahead of time, such as foreknown risks or conditions that informed planning or decision making.

Linguistically, foreknown differs from foreseen in that it emphasizes the state of knowledge existing prior to the moment, rather than the act of predicting or perceiving something before it happens. The common verb form foreknow is rare outside archaic or poetic registers; the past participle foreknown is typically used adjectivally, as in “foreknown risks.”

See also: foreknowledge, foreknow, foreseen, predestination, determinism.