"future" definition, meaning, and origin

Adjective

Having to do with or occurring in the future.
- 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...
- It[The study] also attempts to predict the future progression of AI as it relates to new inventions. - 2019 February 3, “UN Study: China, US, Japan Lead World AI Development”, in Voice of America, archived from the...

Origin

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.

Noun

The time ahead; those moments yet to be experienced.
- 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...
Something that will happen in moments yet to come.
Goodness in what is yet to come. Something to look forward to.
- 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...
The likely prospects for or fate of someone or something in time to come.
- Again, it's unlikely they will return to traffic, but futures have been secured for four that will be heading to heritage railways [...]. - 2020 May 20, John Crosse, “Soon to be gone... but never forgotten”, in Rail,...
Verb tense used to talk about events that will happen in the future; future tense.
Alternative form of futures.
An object that retrieves the value of a promise.
A minor-league prospect.