future

Etymology

From Middle English future, futur, from Old French futur, from Latin futūrus, irregular future active participle of sum (“I am”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become, be”). Cognate with Old English bēo (“I become, I will be, I am”). More at be. Displaced native Old English tōweard and Middle English afterhede (“future”, literally “afterhood”) in the given sense.

noun

1. 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 entire galaxy seems out to get them, the krogan are also generally pessimistic about their race's chances of survival. The surviving krogan see no point to building for the future; there will be no future. The krogan live with an attitude of "kill, pillage, and be selfish, for tomorrow we die." 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Krogan: Culture Codex entry
2. Something that will happen in moments yet to come.
3. 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 young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food. 2013-08-03, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
4. 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 …. May 20 2020, John Crosse, “Soon to be gone... but never forgotten”, in Rail, page 63
5. (grammar) Verb tense used to talk about events that will happen in the future; future tense.
6. (finance) Alternative form of futures
7. (computing, programming) An object that retrieves the value of a promise.
8. (sports) A minor-league prospect.

adj

1. Having to do with or occurring in the future.
   Future generations will either laugh or cry at our stupidity.
   It[The study] also attempts to predict the future progression of AI as it relates to new inventions. Audio (US) (file) 3 February 2019, “UN Study: China, US, Japan Lead World AI Development”, in Voice of America, archived from the original on 2019-02-07