forebear

UK/ˈfɔːˌbɛə/US/ˈfɔɹˌbɛɚ/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,412 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: forebears

A forebear is an ancestor from an earlier generation. Our forebears, a distant forebear, the forebears of the family.

It is slightly formal and usually plural. Note forbear, spelt without the e, which is a different word meaning to hold back — the two are among the easiest pairs in English to confuse. The fore- means before and the -bear is an old word for one who is.

Definitions of forebear

1nounforebearAn ancestor from an earlier generation.C2
“Her forebears came to this valley as farmers more than three hundred years ago.”

forebear is an ancestor.

Where it comes from

From fore, before, plus an old word meaning one who is — a fore-be-er, one who was before.

Late 15th century, from fore- + beer.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Family & People

Practise this word

forebear in the wild

Unlike the breed's blue-eyed Siamese forebear, Orientals are usually green-eyed.
Oriental Shorthair
The area had before 1904 been part of the Staines Rural District created in 1895 and, in turn, its sanitary district forebear.
Feltham Urban District
Information Service), established in 1940, was the intelligence and counter-espionage arm of the Haganah and the forebear of the Military Intelligence Directorate in Mandate Palestine.
Shai (Haganah unit)
The incident was a forebear of the 20th-century Chipko Movement.
Khejarli
DFBW has long been considered the forebear of the more polished examples such as ancient Greek pottery.
Dark faced burnished ware

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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