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Definition 2024


come_to_the_fore

come to the fore

English

Verb

come to the fore (third-person singular simple present comes to the fore, present participle coming to the fore, simple past and past participle came to the fore)

  1. (idiomatic) To become obvious or visible.
    This issue came to the fore last century and has confounded politicians for many years.
    This scholarship will allow talented young people to come to the fore at our university.
    • 2010 December 29, Mark Vesty, “Wigan 2 - 2 Arsenal”, in BBC:
      However, even the dismissal could not break the Latics spirit and the Lancashire side received their richly deserved reward minutes later when Arsenal's defensive Achilles heel came to the fore once again.
  2. (Can we verify(+) this sense?) (idiomatic) To assume a leading or prominent position.
    The winner didn't come to the fore until the race was nearly over.
    • 1891, The Sunday at Home - Volume 38, page 284:
      I was at this here meeting last year; the gemman that's spoken was in a back seat then, for I saw him there, he's come to the fore now, and right glad I am to see him there. But what I want to say is that I have come to the fore too.
    • 2010, Ian Wagstaff, The British at Indianapolis, page 49:
      However, the British influence brought road racers to the 500, not only themselves but also other Europeans and South Americans, many of whom had come to the fore racing on British road circuits in lower formulae.
    • 2012, Didier Fassin, A Companion to Moral Anthropology, ISBN 1118290585, page 25:
      Durkheim's combined critique of Kantian formalism and return to morality understood in terms of duty by universalizing the action maxim was no novelty; it was a commonplace of republican French philosophy, the philosophical thinking that had come to the fore in the second half of the nineteenth century and been presented by such authors as Barni, Renouvier, Fouillée, and Paul Janet.

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