Plural of foreword; the introductory sections at the beginning of books, written before the main text.
From 'fore-' (before) + 'words' (written language). A foreword is literally words that come before the main content. The term became standard for book introductions in publishing.
Interestingly, 'foreword' is often confused with 'forward' (the direction), but a foreword is specifically a front matter introduction written by someone other than the author—it's a specific publishing tradition!
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