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Forebear (also spelled, less commonly, as forbear) was first used by our ancestors in the days of Middle English. Fore- means "coming before," just as in forefather, and -bear means "one that is." This -bear is not to be confused with the -bear in the unrelated verb forbear, which comes from Old English beran, meaning "to bear or carry." The -bear in the noun forebear is a combination of be-, from the verb be (or, more specifically, from been, an old dialect variant of be), and -ar, a form of the suffix -er, which we append to verbs to denote one that performs a specified action. In this case the "action" is simply existing or being—in other words, -bear implies one who is a "be-er."
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Examples of forebear in a Sentence
Mark Landler, New York Times, 24 Dec. 2024
In the 2021 Aria collection celebrating Gucci’s 100-year anniversary, Alessandro Michele checked his forebear’s list not once but twice, with his-and-hers versions.
—Gráinne O'Hara Belluomo, WWD, 23 Dec. 2024
Thus, the adaptation is a dialogue-heavy film (and not only by comparison with its silent forebear, which indeed has dialogue, in the form of intertitles) and a sluggish, lugubrious one.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 23 Dec. 2024
The way that LLMs make sense of the world is similar to the way their forebears—online search engines—peruse the web in order to return relevant results when prompted with a few search terms.
—Jonathan L. Zittrain, The Atlantic, 17 Dec. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near forebear
Cite this Entry
“Forebear.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forebear. Accessed 11 Jan. 2025.
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