Contextualizebeta

forebear

noun
/ˈfɔːˌbɛə/UK/ˈfɔɹˌbɛɚ/US

Etymology

Late 15th century, from fore- + beer (“one who is or exists”, literally “be-er”).

  1. derived from bibere
  2. derived from *biber✻
  3. inherited from *bʰewsóm✻
  4. inherited from *beuzą✻ — “beer”
  5. inherited from *beuʀ✻
  6. inherited from bēor — “beer”
  7. inherited from ber
  8. formed as forebear — “fore- + beer”

Definitions

  1. An ancestor.

    • [1906] 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr. Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold […]
    • One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.

  2. Obsolete spelling of forbear.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for forebear. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA