Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An ancestor. See Synonyms at ancestor.
- n. A person who is from an earlier time and has originated or contributed to a common tradition shared by a particular group.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An ancestor; one who precedes another in the line of genealogy in any degree, but usually in a remote degree.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who precedes another in the line of genealogy in any degree, but usually in a remote degree; an ancestor.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the founder of a family
- n. person from an earlier time who contributed to the tradition shared by some group
Examples
“Take, for example, the fact that while Lovecraft is usually described as a forefather of modern horror fiction, his stories are, to put it bluntly, not very scary.”
“They have a tradition that their forefather was a man of the name of Shayg (شايق), whose four sons gave origin to their principal tribes.”
“Giotto, the man described as the forefather of the Renaissance movement.”
“I am a Sac,' said I; 'my forefather was a Sac; and all the nation call me a Sac.”
“The "forefather" of these boats was Johnny Morris with his Bass Pro Tracker package models.”
“I am a "forefather" myself (for I have six children), but I am not the son of a forefather.”
“Unknown to us, at time we were deliberating over him, the man famously called the forefather of the City Fiction’ had passed on.”
“Mr Brok, who used to be Mr Wolski's predecessor as the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, was presented as a "forefather" of the Eastern Partnership, as he championed a similar idea three years ago, called the "Neighbourhood Policy Plus" for the same group of countries.”
“Then this name problem will look seriously minor in relation to the myriad other issues we'd have to deal with.] [From Mark K: All naming should be matrilineal, since the rate of false paternity over the generations means that people are never descended from their 'forefather' whose name they bear.”
“The founders of the United States learned from their intellectual forefather, John Locke, that children should be taught to dance only in a way that “gives graceful motions all the life, and above all things manliness.””
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘forefather’.
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Fore!
That great old English prefix, quaint almost by default!
foredoom, forename, foretoken, foremast, forebear, foresee, forecastle, forestay, foreskin, foretell, foreshadow, foreclose and 79 more...
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