noun. A phonological relationship where a front vowel is found in place of a relative back vowel in an inflected form of a word.

noun. An analogous relationship between the vowel sounds in a dialect of a language relative to the language standard or an earlier form of the language.

verb. Present participle of front.

"And yet, given that the one thing Terry wasn't allowed to talk about was "it", and that extra security had been laid on at his press conferences as if to underscore that point, the spectacle merely served as a death knell for the phrase "fronting up"."

affronting  blunting  bunting  confronting  grunting  

front