A vague, intuitive sense that something bad is coming.
A vague, intuitive sense that something bad is coming — a presentiment of evil, often without an identifiable cause.
Defined by being a premonition: an eerie, fateful intuition of an impending bad outcome rather than a reasoned fear. This separates it from apprehension (which usually has a known object) and misgiving (doubt about a specific choice). More atmospheric than anxiety or unease; where dread is the felt aversion to something you know is coming, foreboding is the feeling that something is coming. Literary in register — “a sense of foreboding hung over the house.”
Late 14c. “a prediction, portent, omen,” from fore- + a verbal noun from bode (Old English bodian “to proclaim, foretell”). The sense “feeling of something bad about to happen” is from c. 1600.
Shifted from a neutral/external sense (“a portent or omen”) toward the modern internal sense (“a felt premonition of evil”) around 1600; the “especially of coming evil” coloring is now intrinsic. No recent-generation shift is sourced.