forestaller


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fore·stall

 (fôr-stôl′)
tr.v. fore·stalled, fore·stall·ing, fore·stalls
1.
a. To delay, hinder, or prevent (an event, for example) by taking action beforehand: "rehabilitative care, where the goal is not so much to cure disease as it is to forestall further decline" (George Anders). See Synonyms at prevent.
b. To delay, hinder, or prevent (someone) from doing something by taking action beforehand.
2. To prevent or hinder normal sales in (a market), as by buying up merchandise.
[Middle English forestallen, to waylay and rob, from forestal, highway robbery, ambush, from Old English foresteall : fore-, fore- + steall, position; see stel- in Indo-European roots.]
fore·stall′er n.
fore·stall′ment n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Rather than play its usual role of devious forestaller, the portentous, perpetually climactic music of Ruiz's house composer, Jorge Arriagada, here a delicate bombast of Glassian arpeggios and Sibelian dark strings, for once augments the film's prevailing tone.
A garden of forking paths: James Quandt on Raul Ruiz's mysteries of Lisbon
And, in every case, memory is, by turns, death's foreshadower and forestaller.
The wound as memory of ineffable touch: four poets offer a way through
The machine innovators were frequently viewed in the same way the moral economy treated the forestaller and regrater in the marketplace.
England and the Machinery of Reason 1780 to 1830
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