Toweardes

Part of speech: adverb, preposition

Definitions

1. Describing something that is about to come or lies ahead in time, as an archaic term for the coming future
2. Relating to what is yet to arrive, an approaching or forthcoming period or event in old English usage
3. Pertaining to the time that is still to come, an archaic sense meaning impending or about to happen

Etymology: "Toweardes" is an Old English word, recorded in texts from before the Norman Conquer, meaning "future" or "that which is to come." It is built from "tōweard," meaning "about to be, impending" or "future," which itself combines "tō," "to" or "toward," with "-weard," a suffix meaning "turned toward" or "facing" (the same element found in "homeward" and "backward"). So the word is literally something like "turned toward" or "facing one's way," with time imagined as something approaching from ahead. The "-es" ending is a noun-forming suffix, so "toweardes" is a noun from the adjective "tōweard," tracing the same direction-based thinking that gives English "toward" its sense of motion. Old English writers used the word in its plain sense of what lies ahead, and the idea of the future as a thing approaching the viewer appears throughout the language's older vocabulary. Because the word fell out of use after the medieval period, it survives today mainly in dictionaries and scholarly editions of Old English texts rather than in everyday speech.