Other forms: futures
The future is the time that has not happened yet. It takes the — in the future, the near future — and that article is not optional in the way it is in some languages.
As an adjective it means the one to come: a future date, future generations, my future husband. In grammar, the future is the set of ways English talks about time to come, and there is no single future tense — will, going to, the present continuous and the present simple all do part of the job, which is why learners meet future forms rather than a future tense. In finance, futures are contracts to buy at a fixed price later, and that noun is always plural.
1nounfutureThe time that has not yet come.~46%
“Nobody knows what the future holds.”
synonyms: time to come
2adjectivehappeningHappening or existing in the time to come.~9%
“The decision affects future generations.”
3nounprospectsThe prospects somebody or something has.~9%
“The club has no future without a new ground.”
4nounfinanceIn finance, a contract to buy or sell at a fixed price on a later date.~36%
“He trades oil futures.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 11 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
future is a stretch of time.
Latin futurus was the future participle of esse, to be — literally about-to-be. Behind it is the Proto-Indo-European root *bheu-, to become, which also gives English be. So the future is, at the root, simply what is going to be.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰuH- — to become, be
Latin
futūrus
Old French
futur
Middle English
future
English, today
future
Built from
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. a 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA