Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- Completely; excessively, especially with destructive or detrimental effect: forworn.
Wiktionary
- no longer productive Meaning "far", "away"; "from", "out" e.g. forbid, forget, forsay; forbear, fordeem.
- no longer productive Meaning "completely", "to the fullest extent" e.g. fordo; superseded by combinations with "up" in senses where no upward movement is involved, e.g. forgive = give up (one's offenses), forgather = "gather up", forbeat = "beat up", etc.
- dialectal Very; excessively.
GNU Webster's 1913
- A prefix to verbs, having usually the force of a negative or privative. It often implies also
loss ,detriment , ordestruction , and sometimes it is intensive, meaningutterly ,quite thoroughly , as infor bathe.
Etymologies
- From Middle English for-, vor-, from Old English for-, fer-, fær-, fyr- ("far, away, completely", prefix), from the merger of Proto-Germanic *fra- ("away, away from"; see fro, from) and *fur-, *far- (“through, completely, fully”), from Proto-Indo-European *pro-, *per-, *pr-. Cognate with Scots for-, West Frisian fer-, for-, Dutch ver-, German ver-, Swedish för-, Danish for-, Norwegian for-, Latin per-. More at for. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English; see per1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Of course, Stanley's wife, Ellie Joan Bennett, wants Kay to have the elaborate nuptials she never did, so Stanley finds himself accosted by the exhausting, never-ending business of planning-and paying for- a wedding.”
“Although I was looking at all of the stained-glass windows above me in awe, there was one in particular I was looking for- the "Space Window", which I had read contained an actual moon rock brought back by the Apollo 11 mission.”
The Huffington Post: Zoe P. Strassfield: Space History in DC: The Space Window
“As the afterglow of the 36 hour Obama social media blitz wears off, Brazilians need to ask themselves just how much they want to adopt- and pay the price for- the US style business-to-business lifestyle and economic model that he was selling.”
The Huffington Post: Eric Ehrmann: Brazil Unions Flex Muscles as Obama Afterglow Fades
“And in desperation, Zoran managed to slam his head for- ward against the hilt of the dagger, driving it in even deeper.”
“So I was disappointed to see that this year's meeting, hosted by the Washington Chapter, was dominated by the Northern development professionals, in particular those who appear to be engaged in for- profit contracting to execute development projects on behalf of organisations such as USAID.”
“I will beat Ryan because I understand what voters are looking for- experience and the right priorities.”
“According to Heard, Not one journalist at the press conference stood up and asked Eddie Cibrian - who plays the typical guy the club was created for- not a single person in a room of a hundred journalists asked him, 'How does it feel to be the guy who pays to come to this club?' or asked how it felt to be supporting the same message.”
“And also there are plenty of past sins to atone for- on all sides.”
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